zeta components - Page 170

Beginner’s Guide to Flock, the Social Media Browser

- by Asian Angel

Are you wanting a browser that can work as a social hub from the first moment that you start it up? If you love the idea of a browser that is ready to go out of the box then join us as we look at Flock. During the Install Process When you are installing Flock there are two install windows that you should watch for. The first one lets you choose between the “Express Setup & Custom Setup”. We recommend the “Custom Setup”. Once you have selected the “Custom Setup” you can choose which of the following options will enabled. Notice the “anonymous usage statistics” option at the bottom…you can choose to leave this enabled or disable it based on your comfort level. The First Look When you start Flock up for the first time it will open with three tabs. All three are of interest…especially if this is your first time using Flock. With the first tab you can jump right into “logging in/activating” favorite social services within Flock. This page is set to display each time that you open Flock unless you deselect the option in the lower left corner. The second tab provides a very nice overview of Flock and its’ built-in social management power. The third and final page can be considered a “Personal Page”. You can make some changes to the content displayed for quick and easy access and/or monitoring “Twitter Search, Favorite Feeds, Favorite Media, Friend Activity, & Favorite Sites”. Use the “Widget Menu” in the upper left corner to select the “Personal Page Components” that you would like to use. In the upper right corner there is a built-in “Search Bar” and buttons for “Posting to Your Blog & Uploading Media”. To help personalize the “My World Page” just a bit more you can even change the text to your name or whatever best suits your needs. The Flock Toolbar The “Flock Toolbar” is full of social account management goodness. In order from left to right the buttons are: My World (Homepage), Open People Sidebar, Open Media Bar, Open Feeds Sidebar, Webmail, Open Favorites Sidebar, Open Accounts and Services Sidebar, Open Web Clipboard Sidebar, Open Blog Editor, & Open Photo Uploader. The buttons will be “highlighted” with a blue background to help indicate which area you are in. The first area will display a listing of people that you are watching/following at the services shown here. Clicking on the “Media Bar Button” will display the following “Media Slider Bar” above your “Tab Bar”. Notice that there is a built-in “Search Bar” on the right side. Any photos, etc. clicked on will be opened in the currently focused tab below the “Media Bar”. Here is a listing of the “Media Streams” available for viewing. By default Flock will come with a small selection of pre-subscribed RSS Feeds. You can easily unsubscribe, rearrange, add custom folders, or non-categorized feeds as desired. RSS Feeds subscribed to here can be viewed combined together as a single feed (clickable links) in the “My World Page”. or can be viewed individually in a new tab. Very nice! Next on the “Flock Toolbar is the “Webmail Button”. You can set up access to your favorite “Yahoo!, Gmail, & AOL Mail” accounts from here. The “Favorites Sidebar” combines your “Browser History & Bookmarks” into one convenient location. The “Accounts and Services Sidebar” gives you quick and easy access to get logged into your favorite social accounts. Clicking on any of the links will open that particular service’s login page in a new tab. Want to store items such as photos, links, and text to add into a blog post or tweet later on? Just drag and drop them into the “Web Clipboard Sidebar” for later access. Clicking on the “Blog Editor Button” will open up a separate blogging window to compose your posts in. If you have not logged into or set up an account yet in Flock you will see the following message window. The “Blogging Window”…nice, simple, and straightforward. If you are not already logged into your photo account(s) then you will see the following message window when you click on the “Photo Uploader Button”. Clicking “OK” will open the “Accounts and Services Sidebar” with compatible photo services highlighted in a light yellow color. Log in to your favorite service to start uploading all those great images. After Setting Up Here is what our browser looked like after setting up some of our favorite services. The Twitter feed is certainly looking nice and easy to read through… Some tweaking in the “RSS Feeds Sidebar” makes for a perfect reading experience. Keeping up with our e-mail is certainly easy to do too. A look back at the “Accounts and Services Sidebar” shows that all of our accounts are actively logged in (green dot on the right side). Going back to our “My World Page” you can see how nice everything looks for monitoring our “Friend Activity & Favorite Feeds”. Moving on to regular browsing everything is looking very good… Flock is a perfect choice for anyone wanting a browser and social hub all built into a single app. Conclusion Anyone who loves keeping up with their favorite social services while browsing will find using Flock to be a wonderful experience. You literally get the best of both worlds with this browser. Links Download Flock The Official Flock Extensions Homepage The Official Flock Toolbar Homepage Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Color Coding to Windows 7 Media Center Program GuideAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow to use an ISO image on Ubuntu LinuxAdvertise on How-To GeekFixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add Files TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause

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C# Extension Methods - To Extend or Not To Extend...

- by James Michael Hare

I've been thinking a lot about extension methods lately, and I must admit I both love them and hate them. They are a lot like sugar, they taste so nice and sweet, but they'll rot your teeth if you eat them too much. I can't deny that they aren't useful and very handy. One of the major components of the Shared Component library where I work is a set of useful extension methods. But, I also can't deny that they tend to be overused and abused to willy-nilly extend every living type. So what constitutes a good extension method? Obviously, you can write an extension method for nearly anything whether it is a good idea or not. Many times, in fact, an idea seems like a good extension method but in retrospect really doesn't fit. So what's the litmus test? To me, an extension method should be like in the movies when a person runs into their twin, separated at birth. You just know you're related. Obviously, that's hard to quantify, so let's try to put a few rules-of-thumb around them. A good extension method should: Apply to any possible instance of the type it extends. Simplify logic and improve readability/maintainability. Apply to the most specific type or interface applicable. Be isolated in a namespace so that it does not pollute IntelliSense. So let's look at a few examples in relation to these rules. The first rule, to me, is the most important of all. Once again, it bears repeating, a good extension method should apply to all possible instances of the type it extends. It should feel like the long lost relative that should have been included in the original class but somehow was missing from the family tree. Take this nifty little int extension, I saw this once in a blog and at first I really thought it was pretty cool, but then I started noticing a code smell I couldn't quite put my finger on. So let's look: public static class IntExtensinos { public static int Seconds(int num) { return num * 1000; } public static int Minutes(int num) { return num * 60000; } } This is so you could do things like: ... Thread.Sleep(5.Seconds()); ... proxy.Timeout = 1.Minutes(); ... Awww, you say, that's cute! Well, that's the problem, it's kitschy and it doesn't always apply (and incidentally you could achieve the same thing with TimeStamp.FromSeconds(5)). It's syntactical candy that looks cool, but tends to rot and pollute the code. It would allow things like: total += numberOfTodaysOrders.Seconds(); which makes no sense and should never be allowed. The problem is you're applying an extension method to a logical domain, not a type domain. That is, the extension method Seconds() doesn't really apply to ALL ints, it applies to ints that are representative of time that you want to convert to milliseconds. Do you see what I mean? The two problems, in a nutshell, are that a) Seconds() called off a non-time value makes no sense and b) calling Seconds() off something to pass to something that does not take milliseconds will be off by a factor of 1000 or worse. Thus, in my mind, you should only ever have an extension method that applies to the whole domain of that type. For example, this is one of my personal favorites: public static bool IsBetween<T>(this T value, T low, T high) where T : IComparable<T> { return value.CompareTo(low) >= 0 && value.CompareTo(high) <= 0; } This allows you to check if any IComparable<T> is within an upper and lower bound. Think of how many times you type something like: if (response.Employee.Address.YearsAt >= 2 && response.Employee.Address.YearsAt <= 10) { ... } Now, you can instead type: if(response.Employee.Address.YearsAt.IsBetween(2, 10)) { ... } Note that this applies to all IComparable<T> -- that's ints, chars, strings, DateTime, etc -- and does not depend on any logical domain. In addition, it satisfies the second point and actually makes the code more readable and maintainable. Let's look at the third point. In it we said that an extension method should fit the most specific interface or type possible. Now, I'm not saying if you have something that applies to enumerables, you create an extension for List, Array, Dictionary, etc (though you may have reasons for doing so), but that you should beware of making things TOO general. For example, let's say we had an extension method like this: public static T ConvertTo<T>(this object value) { return (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T)); } This lets you do more fluent conversions like: double d = "5.0".ConvertTo<double>(); However, if you dig into Reflector (LOVE that tool) you will see that if the type you are calling on does not implement IConvertible, what you convert to MUST be the exact type or it will throw an InvalidCastException. Now this may or may not be what you want in this situation, and I leave that up to you. Things like this would fail: object value = new Employee(); ... // class cast exception because typeof(IEmployee) != typeof(Employee) IEmployee emp = value.ConvertTo<IEmployee>(); Yes, that's a downfall of working with Convertible in general, but if you wanted your fluent interface to be more type-safe so that ConvertTo were only callable on IConvertibles (and let casting be a manual task), you could easily make it: public static T ConvertTo<T>(this IConvertible value) { return (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T)); } This is what I mean by choosing the best type to extend. Consider that if we used the previous (object) version, every time we typed a dot ('.') on an instance we'd pull up ConvertTo() whether it was applicable or not. By filtering our extension method down to only valid types (those that implement IConvertible) we greatly reduce our IntelliSense pollution and apply a good level of compile-time correctness. Now my fourth rule is just my general rule-of-thumb. Obviously, you can make extension methods as in-your-face as you want. I included all mine in my work libraries in its own sub-namespace, something akin to: namespace Shared.Core.Extensions { ... } This is in a library called Shared.Core, so just referencing the Core library doesn't pollute your IntelliSense, you have to actually do a using on Shared.Core.Extensions to bring the methods in. This is very similar to the way Microsoft puts its extension methods in System.Linq. This way, if you want 'em, you use the appropriate namespace. If you don't want 'em, they won't pollute your namespace. To really make this work, however, that namespace should only include extension methods and subordinate types those extensions themselves may use. If you plant other useful classes in those namespaces, once a user includes it, they get all the extensions too. Also, just as a personal preference, extension methods that aren't simply syntactical shortcuts, I like to put in a static utility class and then have extension methods for syntactical candy. For instance, I think it imaginable that any object could be converted to XML: namespace Shared.Core { // A collection of XML Utility classes public static class XmlUtility { ... // Serialize an object into an xml string public static string ToXml(object input) { var xs = new XmlSerializer(input.GetType()); // use new UTF8Encoding here, not Encoding.UTF8. The later includes // the BOM which screws up subsequent reads, the former does not. using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream()) using (var xmlTextWriter = new XmlTextWriter(memoryStream, new UTF8Encoding())) { xs.Serialize(xmlTextWriter, input); return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(memoryStream.ToArray()); } } ... } } I also wanted to be able to call this from an object like: value.ToXml(); But here's the problem, if i made this an extension method from the start with that one little keyword "this", it would pop into IntelliSense for all objects which could be very polluting. Instead, I put the logic into a utility class so that users have the choice of whether or not they want to use it as just a class and not pollute IntelliSense, then in my extensions namespace, I add the syntactical candy: namespace Shared.Core.Extensions { public static class XmlExtensions { public static string ToXml(this object value) { return XmlUtility.ToXml(value); } } } So now it's the best of both worlds. On one hand, they can use the utility class if they don't want to pollute IntelliSense, and on the other hand they can include the Extensions namespace and use as an extension if they want. The neat thing is it also adheres to the Single Responsibility Principle. The XmlUtility is responsible for converting objects to XML, and the XmlExtensions is responsible for extending object's interface for ToXml().

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Collide with rotation of the object

- by Lahiru

I'm developing a mirror for lazer beam(Ball sprite). There I'm trying to redirect the laze beam according to the ration degree of the mirror(Rectangle). How can I collide the ball to the correct angle if the colliding object is with some angle(45 deg) rather than colliding back. here is an screen shot of my work here is my code using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media; namespace collision { /// <summary> /// This is the main type for your game /// </summary> public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; Texture2D ballTexture; Rectangle ballBounds; Vector2 ballPosition; Vector2 ballVelocity; float ballSpeed = 30f; Texture2D blockTexture; Rectangle blockBounds; Vector2 blockPosition; private Vector2 origin; KeyboardState keyboardState; //Font SpriteFont Font1; Vector2 FontPos; private String displayText; public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to perform any initialization it needs to before starting to run. /// This is where it can query for any required services and load any non-graphic /// related content. Calling base.Initialize will enumerate through any components /// and initialize them as well. /// </summary> protected override void Initialize() { // TODO: Add your initialization logic here ballPosition = new Vector2(this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width / 2, this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height * 0.25f); blockPosition = new Vector2(this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width / 2, this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height /2); ballVelocity = new Vector2(0, 1); base.Initialize(); } /// <summary> /// LoadContent will be called once per game and is the place to load /// all of your content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); ballTexture = Content.Load<Texture2D>("ball"); blockTexture = Content.Load<Texture2D>("mirror"); //create rectangles based off the size of the textures ballBounds = new Rectangle((int)(ballPosition.X - ballTexture.Width / 2), (int)(ballPosition.Y - ballTexture.Height / 2), ballTexture.Width, ballTexture.Height); blockBounds = new Rectangle((int)(blockPosition.X - blockTexture.Width / 2), (int)(blockPosition.Y - blockTexture.Height / 2), blockTexture.Width, blockTexture.Height); origin.X = blockTexture.Width / 2; origin.Y = blockTexture.Height / 2; // TODO: use this.Content to load your game content here Font1 = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("SpriteFont1"); FontPos = new Vector2(graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width - 100, 20); } /// <summary> /// UnloadContent will be called once per game and is the place to unload /// all content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { // TODO: Unload any non ContentManager content here } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to run logic such as updating the world, /// checking for collisions, gathering input, and playing audio. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> /// private float RotationAngle; float circle = MathHelper.Pi * 2; float angle; protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // Allows the game to exit if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) this.Exit(); // TODO: Add your update logic here //check for collision between the ball and the block, or if the ball is outside the bounds of the screen if (ballBounds.Intersects(blockBounds) || !GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Bounds.Contains(ballBounds)) { //we have a simple collision! //if it has hit, swap the direction of the ball, and update it's position ballVelocity = -ballVelocity; ballPosition += ballVelocity * ballSpeed; } else { //move the ball a bit ballPosition += ballVelocity * ballSpeed; } //update bounding boxes ballBounds.X = (int)ballPosition.X; ballBounds.Y = (int)ballPosition.Y; blockBounds.X = (int)blockPosition.X; blockBounds.Y = (int)blockPosition.Y; keyboardState = Keyboard.GetState(); float val = 1.568017f/90; if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space)) RotationAngle = RotationAngle + (float)Math.PI; if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) RotationAngle = RotationAngle - val; angle = (float)Math.PI / 4.0f; // 90 degrees RotationAngle = angle; // RotationAngle = RotationAngle % circle; displayText = RotationAngle.ToString(); base.Update(gameTime); } /// <summary> /// This is called when the game should draw itself. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue); // TODO: Add your drawing code here spriteBatch.Begin(); // Find the center of the string Vector2 FontOrigin = Font1.MeasureString(displayText) / 2; spriteBatch.DrawString(Font1, displayText, FontPos, Color.White, 0, FontOrigin, 1.0f, SpriteEffects.None, 0.5f); spriteBatch.Draw(ballTexture, ballPosition, Color.White); spriteBatch.Draw(blockTexture, blockPosition,null, Color.White, RotationAngle,origin, 1.0f, SpriteEffects.None, 0f); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } }

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XNA: Rotating Bones

- by MLM

XNA 4.0 I am trying to learn how to rotate bones on a very simple tank model I made in Cinema 4D. It is rigged by 3 bones, Root - Main - Turret - Barrel I have binded all of the objects to the bones so that all translations/rotations work as planned in C4D. I exported it as .fbx I based my test project after: http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/simple_animation I can build successfully with no errors but all the rotations I try to do to my bones have no effect. I can transform my Root successfully using below but the bone transforms have no effect: myModel.Root.Transform = world; Matrix turretRotation = Matrix.CreateRotationY(MathHelper.ToRadians(37)); Matrix barrelRotation = Matrix.CreateRotationX(barrelRotationValue); MainBone.Transform = MainTransform; TurretBone.Transform = turretRotation * TurretTransform; BarrelBone.Transform = barrelRotation * BarrelTransform; I am wondering if my model is just not right or something important I am missing in the code. Here is my Game1.cs using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media; namespace ModelTesting { /// <summary> /// This is the main type for your game /// </summary> public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; float aspectRatio; Tank myModel; public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to perform any initialization it needs to before starting to run. /// This is where it can query for any required services and load any non-graphic /// related content. Calling base.Initialize will enumerate through any components /// and initialize them as well. /// </summary> protected override void Initialize() { // TODO: Add your initialization logic here myModel = new Tank(); base.Initialize(); } /// <summary> /// LoadContent will be called once per game and is the place to load /// all of your content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); // TODO: use this.Content to load your game content here myModel.Load(Content); aspectRatio = graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.AspectRatio; } /// <summary> /// UnloadContent will be called once per game and is the place to unload /// all content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { // TODO: Unload any non ContentManager content here } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to run logic such as updating the world, /// checking for collisions, gathering input, and playing audio. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // Allows the game to exit if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) this.Exit(); // TODO: Add your update logic here float time = (float)gameTime.TotalGameTime.TotalSeconds; // Move the pieces /* myModel.TurretRotation = (float)Math.Sin(time * 0.333f) * 1.25f; myModel.BarrelRotation = (float)Math.Sin(time * 0.25f) * 0.333f - 0.333f; */ base.Update(gameTime); } /// <summary> /// This is called when the game should draw itself. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue); // Calculate the camera matrices. float time = (float)gameTime.TotalGameTime.TotalSeconds; Matrix rotation = Matrix.CreateRotationY(MathHelper.ToRadians(45)); Matrix view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(new Vector3(2000, 500, 0), new Vector3(0, 150, 0), Vector3.Up); Matrix projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(MathHelper.PiOver4, graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.AspectRatio, 10, 10000); // TODO: Add your drawing code here myModel.Draw(rotation, view, projection); base.Draw(gameTime); } } } And here is my tank class: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media; namespace ModelTesting { public class Tank { Model myModel; // Array holding all the bone transform matrices for the entire model. // We could just allocate this locally inside the Draw method, but it // is more efficient to reuse a single array, as this avoids creating // unnecessary garbage. public Matrix[] boneTransforms; // Shortcut references to the bones that we are going to animate. // We could just look these up inside the Draw method, but it is more // efficient to do the lookups while loading and cache the results. ModelBone MainBone; ModelBone TurretBone; ModelBone BarrelBone; // Store the original transform matrix for each animating bone. Matrix MainTransform; Matrix TurretTransform; Matrix BarrelTransform; // current animation positions float turretRotationValue; float barrelRotationValue; /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the turret rotation amount. /// </summary> public float TurretRotation { get { return turretRotationValue; } set { turretRotationValue = value; } } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the barrel rotation amount. /// </summary> public float BarrelRotation { get { return barrelRotationValue; } set { barrelRotationValue = value; } } /// <summary> /// Load the model /// </summary> public void Load(ContentManager Content) { // TODO: use this.Content to load your game content here myModel = Content.Load<Model>("Models\\simple_tank02"); MainBone = myModel.Bones["Main"]; TurretBone = myModel.Bones["Turret"]; BarrelBone = myModel.Bones["Barrel"]; MainTransform = MainBone.Transform; TurretTransform = TurretBone.Transform; BarrelTransform = BarrelBone.Transform; // Allocate the transform matrix array. boneTransforms = new Matrix[myModel.Bones.Count]; } public void Draw(Matrix world, Matrix view, Matrix projection) { myModel.Root.Transform = world; Matrix turretRotation = Matrix.CreateRotationY(MathHelper.ToRadians(37)); Matrix barrelRotation = Matrix.CreateRotationX(barrelRotationValue); MainBone.Transform = MainTransform; TurretBone.Transform = turretRotation * TurretTransform; BarrelBone.Transform = barrelRotation * BarrelTransform; myModel.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(boneTransforms); // Draw the model, a model can have multiple meshes, so loop foreach (ModelMesh mesh in myModel.Meshes) { // This is where the mesh orientation is set foreach (BasicEffect effect in mesh.Effects) { effect.World = boneTransforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index]; effect.View = view; effect.Projection = projection; effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); } // Draw the mesh, will use the effects set above mesh.Draw(); } } } }

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The Data Scientist

- by BuckWoody

A new term - well, perhaps not that new - has come up and I’m actually very excited about it. The term is Data Scientist, and since it’s new, it’s fairly undefined. I’ll explain what I think it means, and why I’m excited about it. In general, I’ve found the term deals at its most basic with analyzing data. Of course, we all do that, and the term itself in that definition is redundant. There is no science that I know of that does not work with analyzing lots of data. But the term seems to refer to more than the common practices of looking at data visually, putting it in a spreadsheet or report, or even using simple coding to examine data sets. The term Data Scientist (as far as I can make out this early in it’s use) is someone who has a strong understanding of data sources, relevance (statistical and otherwise) and processing methods as well as front-end displays of large sets of complicated data. Some - but not all - Business Intelligence professionals have these skills. In other cases, senior developers, database architects or others fill these needs, but in my experience, many lack the strong mathematical skills needed to make these choices properly. I’ve divided the knowledge base for someone that would wear this title into three large segments. It remains to be seen if a given Data Scientist would be responsible for knowing all these areas or would specialize. There are pretty high requirements on the math side, specifically in graduate-degree level statistics, but in my experience a company will only have a few of these folks, so they are expected to know quite a bit in each of these areas. Persistence The first area is finding, cleaning and storing the data. In some cases, no cleaning is done prior to storage - it’s just identified and the cleansing is done in a later step. This area is where the professional would be able to tell if a particular data set should be stored in a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS), across a set of key/value pair storage (NoSQL) or in a file system like HDFS (part of the Hadoop landscape) or other methods. Or do you examine the stream of data without storing it in another system at all? This is an important decision - it’s a foundation choice that deals not only with a lot of expense of purchasing systems or even using Cloud Computing (PaaS, SaaS or IaaS) to source it, but also the skillsets and other resources needed to care and feed the system for a long time. The Data Scientist sets something into motion that will probably outlast his or her career at a company or organization. Often these choices are made by senior developers, database administrators or architects in a company. But sometimes each of these has a certain bias towards making a decision one way or another. The Data Scientist would examine these choices in light of the data itself, starting perhaps even before the business requirements are created. The business may not even be aware of all the strategic and tactical data sources that they have access to. Processing Once the decision is made to store the data, the next set of decisions are based around how to process the data. An RDBMS scales well to a certain level, and provides a high degree of ACID compliance as well as offering a well-known set-based language to work with this data. In other cases, scale should be spread among multiple nodes (as in the case of Hadoop landscapes or NoSQL offerings) or even across a Cloud provider like Windows Azure Table Storage. In fact, in many cases - most of the ones I’m dealing with lately - the data should be split among multiple types of processing environments. This is a newer idea. Many data professionals simply pick a methodology (RDBMS with Star Schemas, NoSQL, etc.) and put all data there, regardless of its shape, processing needs and so on. A Data Scientist is familiar not only with the various processing methods, but how they work, so that they can choose the right one for a given need. This is a huge time commitment, hence the need for a dedicated title like this one. Presentation This is where the need for a Data Scientist is most often already being filled, sometimes with more or less success. The latest Business Intelligence systems are quite good at allowing you to create amazing graphics - but it’s the data behind the graphics that are the most important component of truly effective displays. This is where the mathematics requirement of the Data Scientist title is the most unforgiving. In fact, someone without a good foundation in statistics is not a good candidate for creating reports. Even a basic level of statistics can be dangerous. Anyone who works in analyzing data will tell you that there are multiple errors possible when data just seems right - and basic statistics bears out that you’re on the right track - that are only solvable when you understanding why the statistical formula works the way it does. And there are lots of ways of presenting data. Sometimes all you need is a “yes” or “no” answer that can only come after heavy analysis work. In that case, a simple e-mail might be all the reporting you need. In others, complex relationships and multiple components require a deep understanding of the various graphical methods of presenting data. Knowing which kind of chart, color, graphic or shape conveys a particular datum best is essential knowledge for the Data Scientist. Why I’m excited I love this area of study. I like math, stats, and computing technologies, but it goes beyond that. I love what data can do - how it can help an organization. I’ve been fortunate enough in my professional career these past two decades to work with lots of folks who perform this role at companies from aerospace to medical firms, from manufacturing to retail. Interestingly, the size of the company really isn’t germane here. I worked with one very small bio-tech (cryogenics) company that worked deeply with analysis of complex interrelated data. So watch this space. No, I’m not leaving Azure or distributed computing or Microsoft. In fact, I think I’m perfectly situated to investigate this role further. We have a huge set of tools, from RDBMS to Hadoop to allow me to explore. And I’m happy to share what I learn along the way.

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C#: Does an IDisposable in a Halted Iterator Dispose?

- by James Michael Hare

If that sounds confusing, let me give you an example. Let's say you expose a method to read a database of products, and instead of returning a List<Product> you return an IEnumerable<Product> in iterator form (yield return). This accomplishes several good things: The IDataReader is not passed out of the Data Access Layer which prevents abstraction leak and resource leak potentials. You don't need to construct a full List<Product> in memory (which could be very big) if you just want to forward iterate once. If you only want to consume up to a certain point in the list, you won't incur the database cost of looking up the other items. This could give us an example like: 1: // a sample data access object class to do standard CRUD operations. 2: public class ProductDao 3: { 4: private DbProviderFactory _factory = SqlClientFactory.Instance 5: 6: // a method that would retrieve all available products 7: public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 8: { 9: // must create the connection 10: using (var con = _factory.CreateConnection()) 11: { 12: con.ConnectionString = _productsConnectionString; 13: con.Open(); 14: 15: // create the command 16: using (var cmd = _factory.CreateCommand()) 17: { 18: cmd.Connection = con; 19: cmd.CommandText = _getAllProductsStoredProc; 20: cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure; 21: 22: // get a reader and pass back all results 23: using (var reader = cmd.ExecuteReader()) 24: { 25: while(reader.Read()) 26: { 27: yield return new Product 28: { 29: Name = reader["product_name"].ToString(), 30: ... 31: }; 32: } 33: } 34: } 35: } 36: } 37: } The database details themselves are irrelevant. I will say, though, that I'm a big fan of using the System.Data.Common classes instead of your provider specific counterparts directly (SqlCommand, OracleCommand, etc). This lets you mock your data sources easily in unit testing and also allows you to swap out your provider in one line of code. In fact, one of the shared components I'm most proud of implementing was our group's DatabaseUtility library that simplifies all the database access above into one line of code in a thread-safe and provider-neutral way. I went with my own flavor instead of the EL due to the fact I didn't want to force internal company consumers to use the EL if they didn't want to, and it made it easy to allow them to mock their database for unit testing by providing a MockCommand, MockConnection, etc that followed the System.Data.Common model. One of these days I'll blog on that if anyone's interested. Regardless, you often have situations like the above where you are consuming and iterating through a resource that must be closed once you are finished iterating. For the reasons stated above, I didn't want to return IDataReader (that would force them to remember to Dispose it), and I didn't want to return List<Product> (that would force them to hold all products in memory) -- but the first time I wrote this, I was worried. What if you never consume the last item and exit the loop? Are the reader, command, and connection all disposed correctly? Of course, I was 99.999999% sure the creators of C# had already thought of this and taken care of it, but inspection in Reflector was difficult due to the nature of the state machines yield return generates, so I decided to try a quick example program to verify whether or not Dispose() will be called when an iterator is broken from outside the iterator itself -- i.e. before the iterator reports there are no more items. So I wrote a quick Sequencer class with a Dispose() method and an iterator for it. Yes, it is COMPLETELY contrived: 1: // A disposable sequence of int -- yes this is completely contrived... 2: internal class Sequencer : IDisposable 3: { 4: private int _i = 0; 5: private readonly object _mutex = new object(); 6: 7: // Constructs an int sequence. 8: public Sequencer(int start) 9: { 10: _i = start; 11: } 12: 13: // Gets the next integer 14: public int GetNext() 15: { 16: lock (_mutex) 17: { 18: return _i++; 19: } 20: } 21: 22: // Dispose the sequence of integers. 23: public void Dispose() 24: { 25: // force output immediately (flush the buffer) 26: Console.WriteLine("Disposed with last sequence number of {0}!", _i); 27: Console.Out.Flush(); 28: } 29: } And then I created a generator (infinite-loop iterator) that did the using block for auto-Disposal: 1: // simply defines an extension method off of an int to start a sequence 2: public static class SequencerExtensions 3: { 4: // generates an infinite sequence starting at the specified number 5: public static IEnumerable<int> GetSequence(this int starter) 6: { 7: // note the using here, will call Dispose() when block terminated. 8: using (var seq = new Sequencer(starter)) 9: { 10: // infinite loop on this generator, means must be bounded by caller! 11: while(true) 12: { 13: yield return seq.GetNext(); 14: } 15: } 16: } 17: } This is really the same conundrum as the database problem originally posed. Here we are using iteration (yield return) over a large collection (infinite sequence of integers). If we cut the sequence short by breaking iteration, will that using block exit and hence, Dispose be called? Well, let's see: 1: // The test program class 2: public class IteratorTest 3: { 4: // The main test method. 5: public static void Main() 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine("Going to consume 10 of infinite items"); 8: Console.Out.Flush(); 9: 10: foreach(var i in 0.GetSequence()) 11: { 12: // could use TakeWhile, but wanted to output right at break... 13: if(i >= 10) 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("Breaking now!"); 16: Console.Out.Flush(); 17: break; 18: } 19: 20: Console.WriteLine(i); 21: Console.Out.Flush(); 22: } 23: 24: Console.WriteLine("Done with loop."); 25: Console.Out.Flush(); 26: } 27: } So, what do we see? Do we see the "Disposed" message from our dispose, or did the Dispose get skipped because from an "eyeball" perspective we should be locked in that infinite generator loop? Here's the results: 1: Going to consume 10 of infinite items 2: 0 3: 1 4: 2 5: 3 6: 4 7: 5 8: 6 9: 7 10: 8 11: 9 12: Breaking now! 13: Disposed with last sequence number of 11! 14: Done with loop. Yes indeed, when we break the loop, the state machine that C# generates for yield iterate exits the iteration through the using blocks and auto-disposes the IDisposable correctly. I must admit, though, the first time I wrote one, I began to wonder and that led to this test. If you've never seen iterators before (I wrote a previous entry here) the infinite loop may throw you, but you have to keep in mind it is not a linear piece of code, that every time you hit a "yield return" it cedes control back to the state machine generated for the iterator. And this state machine, I'm happy to say, is smart enough to clean up the using blocks correctly. I suspected those wily guys and gals at Microsoft engineered it well, and I wasn't disappointed. But, I've been bitten by assumptions before, so it's good to test and see. Yes, maybe you knew it would or figured it would, but isn't it nice to know? And as those campy 80s G.I. Joe cartoon public service reminders always taught us, "Knowing is half the battle...". Technorati Tags: C#,.NET

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Recap: Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategies Driving Business Innovation

- by Harish Gaur

Hasan Rizvi, Executive Vice President of Oracle Fusion Middleware & Java took the stage on Tuesday to discuss how Oracle Fusion Middleware helps enable business innovation. Through a series of product demos and customer showcases, Hassan demonstrated how Oracle Fusion Middleware is a complete platform to harness the latest technological innovations (cloud, mobile, social and Fast Data) throughout the application lifecycle. Fig 1: Oracle Fusion Middleware is the foundation of business innovation This Session included 4 demonstrations to illustrate these strategies: 1. Build and deploy native mobile applications using Oracle ADF Mobile 2. Empower business user to model processes, design user interface and have rich mobile experience for process interaction using Oracle BPM Suite PS6. 3. Create collaborative user experience and integrate social sign-on using Oracle WebCenter Portal, Oracle WebCenter Content, Oracle Social Network & Oracle Identity Management 11g R2 4. Deploy and manage business applications on Oracle Exalogic Nike, LA Department of Water & Power and Nintendo joined Hasan on stage to share how their organizations are leveraging Oracle Fusion Middleware to enable business innovation. Managing Performance in the Wrld of Social and Mobile How do you provide predictable scalability and performance for an application that monitors active lifestyle of 8 million users on a daily basis? Nike’s answer is Oracle Coherence, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Exadata. Fig 2: Oracle Coherence enabled data grid improves performance of Nike+ Digital Sports Platform Nicole Otto, Sr. Director of Consumer Digital Technology discussed the vision of the Nike+ platform, a platform which represents a shift for NIKE from a "product" to a "product +" experience. There are currently nearly 8 million users in the Nike+ system who are using digitally-enabled Nike+ devices. Once data from the Nike+ device is transmitted to Nike+ application, users access the Nike+ website or via the Nike mobile applicatoin, seeing metrics around their daily active lifestyle and even engage in socially compelling experiences to compare, compete or collaborate their data with their friends. Nike expects the number of users to grow significantly this year which will drive an explosion of data and potential new experiences. To deal with this challenge, Nike envisioned building a shared platform that would drive a consumer-centric model for the company. Nike built this new platform using Oracle Coherence and Oracle Exadata. Using Coherence, Nike built a data grid tier as a distributed cache, thereby provide low-latency access to most recent and relevant data to consumers. Nicole discussed how Nike+ Digital Sports Platform is unique in the way that it utilizes the Coherence Grid. Nike takes advantage of Coherence as a traditional cache using both cache-aside and cache-through patterns. This new tier has enabled Nike to create a horizontally scalable distributed event-driven processing architecture. Current data grid volume is approximately 150,000 request per minute with about 40 million objects at any given time on the grid. Improving Customer Experience Across Multiple Channels Customer experience is on top of every CIO's mind. Customer Experience needs to be consistent and secure across multiple devices consumers may use. This is the challenge Matt Lampe, CIO of Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP) was faced with. Despite being the largest utilities company in the country, LADWP had been relying on a 38 year old customer information system for serving its customers. Their prior system had been unable to keep up with growing customer demands. Last year, LADWP embarked on a journey to improve customer experience for 1.6million LA DWP customers using Oracle WebCenter platform. Figure 3: Multi channel & Multi lingual LADWP.com built using Oracle WebCenter & Oracle Identity Management platform Matt shed light on his efforts to drive customer self-service across 3 dimensions – new website, new IVR platform and new bill payment service. LADWP has built a new portal to increase customer self-service while reducing the transactions via IVR. LADWP's website is powered Oracle WebCenter Portal and is accessible by desktop and mobile devices. By leveraging Oracle WebCenter, LADWP eliminated the need to build, format, and maintain individual mobile applications or websites for different devices. Their entire content is managed using Oracle WebCenter Content and secured using Oracle Identity Management. This new portal automated their paper based processes to web based workflows for customers. This includes automation of Self Service implemented through My Account - like Bill Pay, Payment History, Bill History and Usage Analysis. LADWP's solution went live in April 2012. Matt indicated that LADWP's Self-Service Portal has greatly improved customer satisfaction. In a JD Power Associates website satisfaction survey, results indicate rankings have climbed by 25+ points, marking a remarkable increase in user experience. Bolstering Performance and Simplifying Manageability of Business Applications Ingvar Petursson, Senior Vice Preisdent of IT at Nintendo America joined Hasan on-stage to discuss their choice of Exalogic. Nintendo had significant new requirements coming their way for business systems, both internal and external, in the years to come, especially with new products like the WiiU on the horizon this holiday season. Nintendo needed a platform that could give them performance, availability and ease of management as they deploy business systems. Ingvar selected Engineered Systems for two reasons: 1. High performance 2. Ease of management Figure 4: Nintendo relies on Oracle Exalogic to run ATG eCommerce, Oracle e-Business Suite and several business applications Nintendo made a decision to run their business applications (ATG eCommerce, E-Business Suite) and several Fusion Middleware components on the Exalogic platform. What impressed Ingvar was the "stress” testing results during evaluation. Oracle Exalogic could handle their 3-year load estimates for many functions, which was better than Nintendo expected without any hardware expansion. Faster Processing of Big Data Middleware plays an increasingly important role in Big Data. Last year, we announced at OpenWorld the introduction of Oracle Data Integrator for Hadoop and Oracle Loader for Hadoop which helps in the ability to move, transform, load data to and from Big Data Appliance to Exadata. This year, we’ve added new capabilities to find, filter, and focus data using Oracle Event Processing. This product can natively integrate with Big Data Appliance or runs standalone. Hasan briefly discussed how NTT Docomo, largest mobile operator in Japan, leverages Oracle Event Processing & Oracle Coherence to process mobile data (from 13 million smartphone users) at a speed of 700K events per second before feeding it Hadoop for distributed processing of big data. Figure 5: Mobile traffic data processing at NTT Docomo with Oracle Event Processing & Oracle Coherence

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Curing the Database-Application mismatch

- by Phil Factor

If an application requires access to a database, then you have to be able to deploy it so as to be version-compatible with the database, in phase. If you can deploy both together, then the application and database must normally be deployed at the same version in which they, together, passed integration and functional testing. When a single database supports more than one application, then the problem gets more interesting. I’ll need to be more precise here. It is actually the application-interface definition of the database that needs to be in a compatible ‘version’. Most databases that get into production have no separate application-interface; in other words they are ‘close-coupled’. For this vast majority, the whole database is the application-interface, and applications are free to wander through the bowels of the database scot-free. If you’ve spurned the perceived wisdom of application architects to have a defined application-interface within the database that is based on views and stored procedures, any version-mismatch will be as sensitive as a kitten. A team that creates an application that makes direct access to base tables in a database will have to put a lot of energy into keeping Database and Application in sync, to say nothing of having to tackle issues such as security and audit. It is not the obvious route to development nirvana. I’ve been in countless tense meetings with application developers who initially bridle instinctively at the apparent restrictions of being ‘banned’ from the base tables or routines of a database. There is no good technical reason for needing that sort of access that I’ve ever come across. Everything that the application wants can be delivered via a set of views and procedures, and with far less pain for all concerned: This is the application-interface. If more than zero developers are creating a database-driven application, then the project will benefit from the loose-coupling that an application interface brings. What is important here is that the database development role is separated from the application development role, even if it is the same developer performing both roles. The idea of an application-interface with a database is as old as I can remember. The big corporate or government databases generally supported several applications, and there was little option. When a new application wanted access to an existing corporate database, the developers, and myself as technical architect, would have to meet with hatchet-faced DBAs and production staff to work out an interface. Sure, they would talk up the effort involved for budgetary reasons, but it was routine work, because it decoupled the database from its supporting applications. We’d be given our own stored procedures. One of them, I still remember, had ninety-two parameters. All database access was encapsulated in one application-module. If you have a stable defined application-interface with the database (Yes, one for each application usually) you need to keep the external definitions of the components of this interface in version control, linked with the application source, and carefully track and negotiate any changes between database developers and application developers. Essentially, the application development team owns the interface definition, and the onus is on the Database developers to implement it and maintain it, in conformance. Internally, the database can then make all sorts of changes and refactoring, as long as source control is maintained. If the application interface passes all the comprehensive integration and functional tests for the particular version they were designed for, nothing is broken. Your performance-testing can ‘hang’ on the same interface, since databases are judged on the performance of the application, not an ‘internal’ database process. The database developers have responsibility for maintaining the application-interface, but not its definition, as they refactor the database. This is easily tested on a daily basis since the tests are normally automated. In this setting, the deployment can proceed if the more stable application-interface, rather than the continuously-changing database, passes all tests for the version of the application. Normally, if all goes well, a database with a well-designed application interface can evolve gracefully without changing the external appearance of the interface, and this is confirmed by integration tests that check the interface, and which hopefully don’t need to be altered at all often. If the application is rapidly changing its ‘domain model’ in the light of an increased understanding of the application domain, then it can change the interface definitions and the database developers need only implement the interface rather than refactor the underlying database. The test team will also have to redo the functional and integration tests which are, of course ‘written to’ the definition. The Database developers will find it easier if these tests are done before their re-wiring job to implement the new interface. If, at the other extreme, an application receives no further development work but survives unchanged, the database can continue to change and develop to keep pace with the requirements of the other applications it supports, and needs only to take care that the application interface is never broken. Testing is easy since your automated scripts to test the interface do not need to change. The database developers will, of course, maintain their own source control for the database, and will be likely to maintain versions for all major releases. However, this will not need to be shared with the applications that the database servers. On the other hand, the definition of the application interfaces should be within the application source. Changes in it have to be subject to change-control procedures, as they will require a chain of tests. Once you allow, instead of an application-interface, an intimate relationship between application and database, we are in the realms of impedance mismatch, over and above the obvious security problems. Part of this impedance problem is a difference in development practices. Whereas the application has to be regularly built and integrated, this isn’t necessarily the case with the database. An RDBMS is inherently multi-user and self-integrating. If the developers work together on the database, then a subsequent integration of the database on a staging server doesn’t often bring nasty surprises. A separate database-integration process is only needed if the database is deliberately built in a way that mimics the application development process, but which hampers the normal database-development techniques. This process is like demanding a official walking with a red flag in front of a motor car. In order to closely coordinate databases with applications, entire databases have to be ‘versioned’, so that an application version can be matched with a database version to produce a working build without errors. There is no natural process to ‘version’ databases. Each development project will have to define a system for maintaining the version level. A curious paradox occurs in development when there is no formal application-interface. When the strains and cracks happen, the extra meetings, bureaucracy, and activity required to maintain accurate deployments looks to IT management like work. They see activity, and it looks good. Work means progress. Management then smile on the design choices made. In IT, good design work doesn’t necessarily look good, and vice versa.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 23, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 23, 2010New Projects.NET StarCraft II Replay Parser: A .NET 3.5 Library used to parse StarCraft II replays. Developed in C# 3.5.BackToBasics "B2B" Chat: With technology and software getting more and more complicated, why not get back to basics with BackToBasicsChat. B2B allows you to chat over a ser...Dark Neuron Game Engine: Dark Neuron allows you to easily create fun and interesting games with no need of developing basic game components. This engine is developed for C#...DeepZoom Pivot Constructor: Library to make building DeepZoom images and Pivot displays simpler.ePaper reader: The project is aimed at creating a tool which helps in reading electronic editions of news papers(pdf/flash)FSharpPageProvider for EPiServer CMS 6: This project starts as the port of EPiServer XmlPageProvider to F# programming language. Hammock for REST: Hammock is a REST library for .NET that greatly simplifies consuming and wrapping RESTful services.Kirill Osenkov: Various small projects, tools, utilities and samples by Kirill OsenkovliveDB: liveDB - web client for sql serverLucilla Framework: lucilla frameworkMVC Foolproof Validation: MVC Foolproof Validation aims to extend the Data Annotation validation provided in ASP.NET MVC. Initial efforts are focused on adding contingent va...MVC2Forums: MVC2Forums is simply a forum system based upon MVC2.Mvvm Foundation Silverlight: Mvvm Foundation Silverlight is a library of classes that are helpful when building Silverlight applications based in the MVVM pattern. This librar...MyPersonalWebsite: This is my personal web site developed using ASP.NET MVC 2Planner: Planner makes it easier for all peoples to plan your tasks. It's developed in Delphi.Prose: Prose is an playground for an experimental JavaScript like language compiler. Eventually it will implement 0-CFA, CFA2, and a Tracing JITQuestTracker: QuestTracker is a todo list presented in the format of a quest tracking list such as the one in World of Warcraft.SevenZipLib: SevenZipLib is a C# interface to the 7-zip library.SimpleGeo .Net: .Net Client library for the SimpleGeo.com serviceNew ReleasesAutenticar no OpenLDAP utilizando pGIna: DLL LDAPAuth Plus: New Group: No LoginBMap.NET: BMap.NET 2: This is the 2nd version of BMap.NET. It has included these tags: Bing Maps, and "About BMap.NET".Cronos: Version 2.04: This is primarily a bug-fix release. Several numerical issues have been resolved, and a resource leak (of MS Windows graphics objects) has been fi...EV Dashboard: v1.0: This release includes support for an App.config file and Auto Connect, which will connect to the specified BMS at startup. Note: You still have to ...GKO Libraries: GKO Libraries 0.1 Beta: 0.1 Beta Added More utilities and functions RefactoringsGLB Virtual Player Builder: 0.4.2 Beta: Beta build that includes a new player creator.HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201003222215): New features: (None) Bug fix: Fixed bugs of unable to parse XML file stream returned from HKGolden API, as the encoding of XML file stream chang...jQuery Web Controls ASP.Net: jQueryWebControls 1.1.1.2: En esta versión se han corregido problemas existentes en la ejecución de los scripts de jquery cuando se utilizaban MasterPage y/o Ajax Control Too...LightKit: Version 0.2.2: Fixed: fixed bug when CollectionItemsEditor ditermines IsChanged property incorrectly fixed ObjectEditor`a thisstring propertyName method wrong l...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.8: New items added since v1.1 include: Support for OAuth (via DotNetOpenAuth), secure communication via https, VB language support, serialization of ...MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi (March 22): This version fixes the icons for the desktop installer and changes the install directory to Program Files\MapWindow instead of Program Files\ISU.Math.NET Numerics: 2010.3.22.1334 Build: Latest alpha buildMiniCalendar Web Part: MiniCalendar Web Part 1.8: A small web part to display links to events stored in a list (or document library) in a mini calendar (in month view mode). It shows tooltips for t...OCInject: Release Two: This release brings some missing features such as Singleton support, Func<T> factories and child containers. It, also, has an updated constructor ...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (March 2010): Installer of the latest binaries of Phalanger 2.0 (March 2010) and its integration into Visual Studio 2008. Easy installer with automatic IIS int...Planner: Planner: firstQuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1: This is the preliminary release of QuestTracker. There's not much documentation or many features yet, but it is functional. Any feedback would be a...QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1.1: Bugfix for QuestTracker 0.1QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1.2: Fixes an issue with saving the quest list.Rawr: Rawr 2.3.13: We're pleased to announce that, after long last, Rawr3 has entered public beta. You're still welcome to continue using Rawr2 (that's what you're re...Single Web Session: Alpha Model Plugin: !How to use Single Web Session add following line into your web config <httpModules> <add name="SingleSession" type="SingleWebSession.Model.W...SMIL - SharePoint Map Integration Layer: SMIL 1.0: Custom data field Extracts Lat/Lon from EXIF from images being uploaded. Map Web Part Filter with SharePoint views Filter by connecting to...sTASKedit: sTASKedit 42532 (Developer Alpha): This release is only to verify the currently decoded task structure... Supported files: tasks.data (v1.3.6 client)VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30322.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Advanced Notepad (Visual C++ 2008): An notepad written in c that can save in a rich text file format.Wallpaper Rotator: Wallpaper Rotator 0.5: Wallpaper Rotator 0.5 This version includes the following improvements: Saving the choice of "Random Order (Shuffle Mode)" Updating the configu...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMost Active ProjectsRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETLINQ to TwitterPHPExcelFarseer Physics EngineFacebook Developer ToolkitNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Modulepatterns & practices: Composite WPF and SilverlightN2 CMS

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xml file save/read error (making a highscore system for XNA game)

- by Eddy

i get an error after i write player name to the file for second or third time (An unhandled exception of type 'System.InvalidOperationException' occurred in System.Xml.dll Additional information: There is an error in XML document (18, 17).) (in highscores load method In data = (HighScoreData)serializer.Deserialize(stream); it stops) the problem is that some how it adds additional "" at the end of my .dat file could anyone tell me how to fix this? the file before save looks: <?xml version="1.0"?> <HighScoreData xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <PlayerName> <string>neil</string> <string>shawn</string> <string>mark</string> <string>cindy</string> <string>sam</string> </PlayerName> <Score> <int>200</int> <int>180</int> <int>150</int> <int>100</int> <int>50</int> </Score> <Count>5</Count> </HighScoreData> the file after save looks: <?xml version="1.0"?> <HighScoreData xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <PlayerName> <string>Nick</string> <string>Nick</string> <string>neil</string> <string>shawn</string> <string>mark</string> </PlayerName> <Score> <int>210</int> <int>210</int> <int>200</int> <int>180</int> <int>150</int> </Score> <Count>5</Count> </HighScoreData>> the part of my code that does all of save load to xml is: DECLARATIONS PART [Serializable] public struct HighScoreData { public string[] PlayerName; public int[] Score; public int Count; public HighScoreData(int count) { PlayerName = new string[count]; Score = new int[count]; Count = count; } } IAsyncResult result = null; bool inputName; HighScoreData data; int Score = 0; public string NAME; public string HighScoresFilename = "highscores.dat"; Game1 constructor public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; Width = graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = 960; Height = graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight =640; GamerServicesComponent GSC = new GamerServicesComponent(this); Components.Add(GSC); } Inicialize function (end of it) protected override void Initialize() { //other game code base.Initialize(); string fullpath =Path.Combine(HighScoresFilename); if (!File.Exists(fullpath)) { //If the file doesn't exist, make a fake one... // Create the data to save data = new HighScoreData(5); data.PlayerName[0] = "neil"; data.Score[0] = 200; data.PlayerName[1] = "shawn"; data.Score[1] = 180; data.PlayerName[2] = "mark"; data.Score[2] = 150; data.PlayerName[3] = "cindy"; data.Score[3] = 100; data.PlayerName[4] = "sam"; data.Score[4] = 50; SaveHighScores(data, HighScoresFilename); } } all methods for loading saving and output public static void SaveHighScores(HighScoreData data, string filename) { // Get the path of the save game string fullpath = Path.Combine("highscores.dat"); // Open the file, creating it if necessary FileStream stream = File.Open(fullpath, FileMode.OpenOrCreate); try { // Convert the object to XML data and put it in the stream XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(HighScoreData)); serializer.Serialize(stream, data); } finally { // Close the file stream.Close(); } } /* Load highscores */ public static HighScoreData LoadHighScores(string filename) { HighScoreData data; // Get the path of the save game string fullpath = Path.Combine("highscores.dat"); // Open the file FileStream stream = File.Open(fullpath, FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.Read); try { // Read the data from the file XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(HighScoreData)); data = (HighScoreData)serializer.Deserialize(stream);//this is the line // where program gives an error } finally { // Close the file stream.Close(); } return (data); } /* Save player highscore when game ends */ private void SaveHighScore() { // Create the data to saved HighScoreData data = LoadHighScores(HighScoresFilename); int scoreIndex = -1; for (int i = 0; i < data.Count ; i++) { if (Score > data.Score[i]) { scoreIndex = i; break; } } if (scoreIndex > -1) { //New high score found ... do swaps for (int i = data.Count - 1; i > scoreIndex; i--) { data.PlayerName[i] = data.PlayerName[i - 1]; data.Score[i] = data.Score[i - 1]; } data.PlayerName[scoreIndex] = NAME; //Retrieve User Name Here data.Score[scoreIndex] = Score; // Retrieve score here SaveHighScores(data, HighScoresFilename); } } /* Iterate through data if highscore is called and make the string to be saved*/ public string makeHighScoreString() { // Create the data to save HighScoreData data2 = LoadHighScores(HighScoresFilename); // Create scoreBoardString string scoreBoardString = "Highscores:\n\n"; for (int i = 0; i<5;i++) { scoreBoardString = scoreBoardString + data2.PlayerName[i] + "-" + data2.Score[i] + "\n"; } return scoreBoardString; } when ill make this work i will start this code when i call game over (now i start it when i press some buttons, so i could test it faster) public void InputYourName() { if (result == null && !Guide.IsVisible) { string title = "Name"; string description = "Write your name in order to save your Score"; string defaultText = "Nick"; PlayerIndex playerIndex = new PlayerIndex(); result= Guide.BeginShowKeyboardInput(playerIndex, title, description, defaultText, null, null); // NAME = result.ToString(); } if (result != null && result.IsCompleted) { NAME = Guide.EndShowKeyboardInput(result); result = null; inputName = false; SaveHighScore(); } } this where i call output to the screen (ill call this in highscores meniu section when i am done with debugging) spriteBatch.DrawString(Font1, "" + makeHighScoreString(),new Vector2(500,200), Color.White); }

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The SPARC SuperCluster

- by Karoly Vegh

Oracle has been providing a lead in the Engineered Systems business for quite a while now, in accordance with the motto "Hardware and Software Engineered to Work Together." Indeed it is hard to find a better definition of these systems. Allow me to summarize the idea. It is: Build a compute platform optimized to run your technologies Develop application aware, intelligently caching storage components Take an impressively fast network technology interconnecting it with the compute nodes Tune the application to scale with the nodes to yet unseen performance Reduce the amount of data moving via compression Provide this all in a pre-integrated single product with a single-pane management interface All these ideas have been around in IT for quite some time now. The real Oracle advantage is adding the last one to put these all together. Oracle has built quite a portfolio of Engineered Systems, to run its technologies - and run those like they never ran before. In this post I'll focus on one of them that serves as a consolidation demigod, a multi-purpose engineered system. As you probably have guessed, I am talking about the SPARC SuperCluster. It has many great features inherited from its predecessors, and it adds several new ones. Allow me to pick out and elaborate about some of the most interesting ones from a technological point of view. I. It is the SPARC SuperCluster T4-4. That is, as compute nodes, it includes SPARC T4-4 servers that we learned to appreciate and respect for their features: The SPARC T4 CPUs: Each CPU has 8 cores, each core runs 8 threads. The SPARC T4-4 servers have 4 sockets. That is, a single compute node can in parallel, simultaneously execute 256 threads. Now, a full-rack SPARC SuperCluster has 4 of these servers on board. Remember the keyword demigod. While retaining the forerunner SPARC T3's exceptional throughput, the SPARC T4 CPUs raise the bar with single performance too - a humble 5x better one than their ancestors. actually, the SPARC T4 CPU cores run in both single-threaded and multi-threaded mode, and switch between these two on-the-fly, fulfilling not only single-threaded OR multi-threaded applications' needs, but even mixed requirements (like in database workloads!). Data security, anyone? Every SPARC T4 CPU core has a built-in encryption engine, that is, encryption algorithms cast into silicon. A PCI controller right on the chip for customers who need I/O performance. Built-in, no-cost Virtualization: Oracle VM for SPARC (the former LDoms or Logical Domains) is not a server-emulation virtualization technology but rather a serverpartitioning one, the hypervisor runs in the server firmware, and all the VMs' HW resources (I/O, CPU, memory) are accessed natively, without performance overhead. This enables customers to run a number of Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 VMs separated, independent of each other within a physical server II. For Database performance, it includes Exadata Storage Cells - one of the main reasons why the Exadata Database Machine performs at diabolic speed. What makes them important? They provide DB backend storage for your Oracle Databases to run on the SPARC SuperCluster, that is what they are built and tuned for DB performance. These storage cells are SQL-aware. That is, if a SPARC T4 database compute node executes a query, it doesn't simply request tons of raw datablocks from the storage, filters the received data, and throws away most of it where the statement doesn't apply, but provides the SQL query to the storage node too. The storage cell software speaks SQL, that is, it is able to prefilter and through that transfer only the relevant data. With this, the traffic between database nodes and storage cells is reduced immensely. Less I/O is a good thing - as they say, all the CPUs of the world do one thing just as fast as any other - and that is waiting for I/O. They don't only pre-filter, but also provide data preprocessing features - e.g. if a DB-node requests an aggregate of data, they can calculate it, and handover only the results, not the whole set. Again, less data to transfer. They support the magical HCC, (Hybrid Columnar Compression). That is, data can be stored in a precompressed form on the storage. Less data to transfer. Of course one can't simply rely on disks for performance, there is Flash Storage included there for caching. III. The low latency, high-speed backbone network: InfiniBand, that interconnects all the members with: Real High Speed: 40 Gbit/s. Full Duplex, of course. Oh, and a really low latency. RDMA. Remote Direct Memory Access. This technology allows the DB nodes to do exactly that. Remotely, directly placing SQL commands into the Memory of the storage cells. Dodging all the network-stack bottlenecks, avoiding overhead, placing requests directly into the process queue. You can also run IP over InfiniBand if you please - that's the way the compute nodes can communicate with each other. IV. Including a general-purpose storage too: the ZFSSA, which is a unified storage, providing NAS and SAN access too, with the following features: NFS over RDMA over InfiniBand. Nothing is faster network-filesystem-wise. All the ZFS features onboard, hybrid storage pools, compression, deduplication, snapshot, replication, NFS and CIFS shares Storageheads in a HA-Cluster configuration providing availability of the data DTrace Live Analytics in a web-based Administration UI Being a general purpose application data storage for your non-database applications running on the SPARC SuperCluster over whichever protocol they prefer, easily replicating, snapshotting, cloning data for them. There's a lot of great technology included in Oracle's SPARC SuperCluster, we have talked its interior through. As for external scalability: you can start with a half- of full- rack SPARC SuperCluster, and scale out to several racks - that is, stacking not separate full-rack SPARC SuperClusters, but extending always one large instance of the size of several full-racks. Yes, over InfiniBand network. Add racks as you grow. What technologies shall run on it? SPARC SuperCluster is a general purpose scaleout consolidation/cloud environment. You can run Oracle Databases with RAC scaling, or Oracle Weblogic (end enjoy the SPARC T4's advantages to run Java). Remember, Oracle technologies have been integrated with the Oracle Engineered Systems - this is the Oracle on Oracle advantage. But you can run other software environments such as SAP if you please too. Run any application that runs on Oracle Solaris 10 or Solaris 11. Separate them in Virtual Machines, or even Oracle Solaris Zones, monitor and manage those from a central UI. Here the key takeaways once again: The SPARC SuperCluster: Is a pre-integrated Engineered System Contains SPARC T4-4 servers with built-in virtualization, cryptography, dynamic threading Contains the Exadata storage cells that intelligently offload the burden of the DB-nodes Contains a highly available ZFS Storage Appliance, that provides SAN/NAS storage in a unified way Combines all these elements over a high-speed, low-latency backbone network implemented with InfiniBand Can grow from a single half-rack to several full-rack size Supports the consolidation of hundreds of applications To summarize: All these technologies are great by themselves, but the real value is like in every other Oracle Engineered System: Integration. All these technologies are tuned to perform together. Together they are way more than the sum of all - and a careful and actually very time consuming integration process is necessary to orchestrate all these for performance. The SPARC SuperCluster's goal is to enable infrastructure operations and offer a pre-integrated solution that can be architected and delivered in hours instead of months of evaluations and tests. The tedious and most importantly time and resource consuming part of the work - testing and evaluating - has been done. Now go, provide services. -- charlie

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Silverlight MEF – Download On Demand

- by PeterTweed

Take the Slalom Challenge at www.slalomchallenge.com! A common challenge with building complex applications in Silverlight is the initial download size of the xap file. MEF enables us to build composable applications that allows us to build complex composite applications. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a mechanism to spilt out components into different Silverlight applications in separate xap files and download the separate xap file only if needed? MEF gives us the ability to do this. This post will cover the basics needed to build such a composite application split between different silerlight applications and download the referenced silverlight application only when needed. Steps: 1. Create a Silverlight 4 application 2. Add references to the following assemblies: System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll System.ComponentModel.Composition.Initialization.dll 3. Add a new Silverlight 4 application called ExternalSilverlightApplication to the solution that was created in step 1. Ensure the new application is hosted in the web application for the solution and choose to not create a test page for the new application. 4. Delete the App.xaml and MainPage.xaml files – they aren’t needed. 5. Add references to the following assemblies in the ExternalSilverlightApplication project: System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll System.ComponentModel.Composition.Initialization.dll 6. Ensure the two references above have their Copy Local values set to false. As we will have these two assmblies in the original Silverlight application, we will have no need to include them in the built ExternalSilverlightApplication build. 7. Add a new user control called LeftControl to the ExternalSilverlightApplication project. 8. Replace the LayoutRoot Grid with the following xaml: <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Beige" Margin="40" > <Button Content="Left Content" Margin="30"></Button> </Grid> 9. Add the following statement to the top of the LeftControl.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 10. Add the following attribute to the LeftControl class [Export(typeof(LeftControl))] This attribute tells MEF that the type LeftControl will be exported – i.e. made available for other applications to import and compose into the application. 11. Add a new user control called RightControl to the ExternalSilverlightApplication project. 12. Replace the LayoutRoot Grid with the following xaml: <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Green" Margin="40" > <TextBlock Margin="40" Foreground="White" Text="Right Control" FontSize="16" VerticalAlignment="Center" HorizontalAlignment="Center" ></TextBlock> </Grid> 13. Add the following statement to the top of the RightControl.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 14. Add the following attribute to the RightControl class [Export(typeof(RightControl))] 15. In your original Silverlight project add a reference to the ExternalSilverlightApplication project. 16. Change the reference to the ExternalSilverlightApplication project to have it’s Copy Local value = false. This will ensure that the referenced ExternalSilverlightApplication Silverlight application is not included in the original Silverlight application package when it it built. The ExternalSilverlightApplication Silverlight application therefore has to be downloaded on demand by the original Silverlight application for it’s controls to be used. 1. In your original Silverlight project add the following xaml to the LayoutRoot Grid in MainPage.xaml: <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="65*" /> <RowDefinition Height="235*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Button Name="LoaderButton" Content="Download External Controls" Click="Button_Click"></Button> <StackPanel Grid.Row="1" Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Center" > <Border Name="LeftContent" Background="Red" BorderBrush="Gray" CornerRadius="20"></Border> <Border Name="RightContent" Background="Red" BorderBrush="Gray" CornerRadius="20"></Border> </StackPanel> The borders will hold the controls that will be downlaoded, imported and composed via MEF when the button is clicked. 2. Add the following statement to the top of the MainPage.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 3. Add the following properties to the MainPage class: [Import(typeof(LeftControl))] public LeftControl LeftUserControl { get; set; } [Import(typeof(RightControl))] public RightControl RightUserControl { get; set; } This defines properties accepting LeftControl and RightControl types. The attrributes are used to tell MEF the discovered type that should be applied to the property when composition occurs. 17. Add the following event handler for the button click to the MainPage.xaml.cs file: private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { DeploymentCatalog deploymentCatalog = new DeploymentCatalog("ExternalSilverlightApplication.xap"); CompositionHost.Initialize(deploymentCatalog); deploymentCatalog.DownloadCompleted += (s, i) => { if (i.Error == null) { CompositionInitializer.SatisfyImports(this); LeftContent.Child = LeftUserControl; RightContent.Child = RightUserControl; LoaderButton.IsEnabled = false; } }; deploymentCatalog.DownloadAsync(); } This is where the magic happens! The deploymentCatalog object is pointed to the ExternalSilverlightApplication.xap file. It is then associated with the CompositionHost initialization. As the download will be asynchronous, an eventhandler is created for the DownloadCompleted event. The deploymentCatalog object is then told to start the asynchronous download. The event handler that executes when the download is completed uses the CompositionInitializer.SatisfyImports() function to tell MEF to satisfy the Imports for the current class. It is at this point that the LeftUserControl and RightUserControl properties are initialized with composed objects from the downloaded ExternalSilverlightApplication.xap package. 18. Run the application click the Download External Controls button and see the controls defined in the ExternalSilverlightApplication application loaded into the original Silverlight application. Congratulations! You have implemented download on demand capabilities for composite applications using the MEF DeploymentCatalog class. You are now able to segment your applications into separate xap file for deployment.

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Configuration "diff" across Oracle WebCenter Sites instances

- by Mark Fincham-Oracle

Problem Statement With many Oracle WebCenter Sites environments - how do you know if the various configuration assets and settings are in sync across all of those environments? Background At Oracle we typically have a "W" shaped set of environments. For the "Production" environments we typically have a disaster recovery clone as well and sometimes additional QA environments alongside the production management environment. In the case of www.java.com we have 10 different environments. All configuration assets/settings (CSElements, Templates, Start Menus etc..) start life on the Development Management environment and are then published downstream to other environments as part of the software development lifecycle. Ensuring that each of these 10 environments has the same set of Templates, CSElements, StartMenus, TreeTabs etc.. is impossible to do efficiently without automation. Solution Summary The solution comprises of two components. A JSON data feed from each environment. A simple HTML page that consumes these JSON data feeds. Data Feed: Create a JSON WebService on each environment. The WebService is no more than a SiteEntry + CSElement. The CSElement queries various DB tables to obtain details of the assets/settings returning this data in a JSON feed. Report: Create a simple HTML page that uses JQuery to fetch the JSON feed from each environment and display the results in a table. Since all assets (CSElements, Templates etc..) are published between environments they will have the same last modified date. If the last modified date of an asset is different in the JSON feed or is mising from an environment entirely then highlight that in the report table. Example Solution Details Step 1: Create a Site Entry + CSElement that outputs JSON Site Entry & CSElement Setup The SiteEntry should be uncached so that the most recent configuration information is returned at all times. In the CSElement set the contenttype accordingly: Step 2: Write the CSElement Logic The basic logic, that we repeat for each asset or setting that we are interested in, is to query the DB using <ics:sql> and then loop over the resultset with <ics:listloop>. For example: <ics:sql sql="SELECT name,updateddate FROM Template WHERE status != 'VO'" listname="TemplateList" table="Template" /> "templates": [ <ics:listloop listname="TemplateList"> {"name":"<ics:listget listname="TemplateList" fieldname="name"/>", "modified":"<ics:listget listname="TemplateList" fieldname="updateddate"/>"}, </ics:listloop> ], A comprehensive list of SQL queries to fetch each configuration asset/settings can be seen in the appendix at the end of this article. For the generation of the JSON data structure you could use Jettison (the library ships with the 11.1.1.8 version of the product), native Java 7 capabilities or (as the above example demonstrates) you could roll-your-own JSON output but that is not advised. Step 3: Create an HTML Report The JavaScript logic looks something like this.. 1) Create a list of JSON feeds to fetch: ENVS['dev-mgmngt'] = 'http://dev-mngmnt.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json'; ENVS['dev-dlvry'] = 'http://dev-dlvry.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json'; ENVS['test-mngmnt'] = 'http://test-mngmnt.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json'; ENVS['test-dlvry'] = 'http://test-dlvry.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json'; 2) Create a function to get the JSON feeds: function getDataForEnvironment(url){ return $.ajax({ type: 'GET', url: url, dataType: 'jsonp', beforeSend: function (jqXHR, settings){ jqXHR.originalEnv = env; jqXHR.originalUrl = url; }, success: function(json, status, jqXHR) { console.log('....success fetching: ' + jqXHR.originalUrl); // store the returned data in ALLDATA ALLDATA[jqXHR.originalEnv] = json; }, error: function(jqXHR, status, e) { console.log('....ERROR: Failed to get data from [' + url + '] ' + status + ' ' + e); } }); } 3) Fetch each JSON feed: for (var env in ENVS) { console.log('Fetching data for env [' + env +'].'); var promisedData = getDataForEnvironment(ENVS[env]); promisedData.success(function (data) {}); } 4) For each configuration asset or setting create a table in the report For example, CSElements: 1) Get a list of unique CSElement names from all of the returned JSON data. 2) For each unique CSElement name, create a row in the table 3) Select 1 environment to represent the master or ideal state (e.g. "Everything should be like Production Delivery") 4) For each environment, compare the last modified date of this envs CSElement to the master. Highlight any differences in last modified date or missing CSElements. 5) Repeat... Appendix This section contains various SQL statements that can be used to retrieve configuration settings from the DB. Templates <ics:sql sql="SELECT name,updateddate FROM Template WHERE status != 'VO'" listname="TemplateList" table="Template" /> CSElements <ics:sql sql="SELECT name,updateddate FROM CSElement WHERE status != 'VO'" listname="CSEList" table="CSElement" /> Start Menus <ics:sql sql="select sm.id, sm.cs_name, sm.cs_description, sm.cs_assettype, sm.cs_assetsubtype, sm.cs_itemtype, smr.cs_rolename, p.name from StartMenu sm, StartMenu_Sites sms, StartMenu_Roles smr, Publication p where sm.id=sms.ownerid and sm.id=smr.cs_ownerid and sms.pubid=p.id order by sm.id" listname="startList" table="Publication,StartMenu,StartMenu_Roles,StartMenu_Sites"/> Publishing Configurations <ics:sql sql="select id, name, description, type, dest, factors from PubTarget" listname="pubTargetList" table="PubTarget" /> Tree Tabs <ics:sql sql="select tt.id, tt.title, tt.tooltip, p.name as pubname, ttr.cs_rolename, ttsect.name as sectname from TreeTabs tt, TreeTabs_Roles ttr, TreeTabs_Sect ttsect,TreeTabs_Sites ttsites LEFT JOIN Publication p on p.id=ttsites.pubid where p.id is not null and tt.id=ttsites.ownerid and ttsites.pubid=p.id and tt.id=ttr.cs_ownerid and tt.id=ttsect.ownerid order by tt.id" listname="treeTabList" table="TreeTabs,TreeTabs_Roles,TreeTabs_Sect,TreeTabs_Sites,Publication" /> Filters <ics:sql sql="select name,description,classname from Filters" listname="filtersList" table="Filters" /> Attribute Types <ics:sql sql="select id,valuetype,name,updateddate from AttrTypes where status != 'VO'" listname="AttrList" table="AttrTypes" /> WebReference Patterns <ics:sql sql="select id,webroot,pattern,assettype,name,params,publication from WebReferencesPatterns" listname="WebRefList" table="WebReferencesPatterns" /> Device Groups <ics:sql sql="select id,devicegroupsuffix,updateddate,name from DeviceGroup" listname="DeviceList" table="DeviceGroup" /> Site Entries <ics:sql sql="select se.id,se.name,se.pagename,se.cselement_id,se.updateddate,cse.rootelement from SiteEntry se LEFT JOIN CSElement cse on cse.id = se.cselement_id where se.status != 'VO'" listname="SiteList" table="SiteEntry,CSElement" /> Webroots <ics:sql sql="select id,name,rooturl,updatedby,updateddate from WebRoot" listname="webrootList" table="WebRoot" /> Page Definitions <ics:sql sql="select pd.id, pd.name, pd.updatedby, pd.updateddate, pd.description, pdt.attributeid, pa.name as nameattr, pdt.requiredflag, pdt.ordinal from PageDefinition pd, PageDefinition_TAttr pdt, PageAttribute pa where pd.status != 'VO' and pa.id=pdt.attributeid and pdt.ownerid=pd.id order by pd.id,pdt.ordinal" listname="pageDefList" table="PageDefinition,PageAttribute,PageDefinition_TAttr" /> FW_Application <ics:sql sql="select id,name,updateddate from FW_Application where status != 'VO'" listname="FWList" table="FW_Application" /> Custom Elements <ics:sql sql="select elementname from ElementCatalog where elementname like 'CustomElements%'" listname="elementList" table="ElementCatalog" />

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What Makes a Good Design Critic? CHI 2010 Panel Review

- by jatin.thaker

Author: Daniel Schwartz, Senior Interaction Designer, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle Applications UX Chief Evangelist Patanjali Venkatacharya organized and moderated an innovative and stimulating panel discussion titled "What Makes a Good Design Critic? Food Design vs. Product Design Criticism" at CHI 2010, the annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The panelists included Janice Rohn, VP of User Experience at Experian; Tami Hardeman, a food stylist; Ed Seiber, a restaurant architect and designer; John Kessler, a food critic and writer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and Larry Powers, Chef de Cuisine at Shaun's restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia. Building off the momentum of his highly acclaimed panel at CHI 2009 on what interaction design can learn from food design (for which I was on the other side as a panelist), Venkatacharya brought together new people with different roles in the restaurant and software interaction design fields. The session was also quite delicious -- but more on that later. Criticism, as it applies to food and product or interaction design, was the tasty topic for this forum and showed that strong parallels exist between food and interaction design criticism. Figure 1. The panelists in discussion: (left to right) Janice Rohn, Ed Seiber, Tami Hardeman, and John Kessler. The panelists had great insights to share from their respective fields, and they enthusiastically discussed as if they were at a casual collegial dinner. John Kessler stated that he prefers to have one professional critic's opinion in general than a large sampling of customers, however, "Web sites like Yelp get users excited by the collective approach. People are attracted to things desired by so many." Janice Rohn added that this collective desire was especially true for users of consumer products. Ed Seiber remarked that while people looked to the popular view for their target tastes and product choices, "professional critics like John [Kessler] still hold a big weight on public opinion." Chef Powers indicated that chefs take in feedback from all sources, adding, "word of mouth is very powerful. We also look heavily at the sales of the dishes to see what's moving; what's selling and thus successful." Hearing this discussion validates our design work at Oracle in that we listen to our users (our diners) and industry feedback (our critics) to ensure an optimal user experience of our products. Rohn considers that restaurateur Danny Meyer's book, Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, which is about creating successful restaurant experiences, has many applicable parallels to user experience design. Meyer actually argues that the customer is not always right, but that "they must always feel heard." Seiber agreed, but noted "customers are not designers," and while designers need to listen to customer feedback, it is the designer's job to synthesize it. Seiber feels it's the critic's job to point out when something is missing or not well-prioritized. In interaction design, our challenges are quite similar, if not parallel. Software tasks are like puzzles that are in search of a solution on how to be best completed. As a food stylist, Tami Hardeman has the demanding and challenging task of presenting food to be as delectable as can be. To present food in its best light requires a lot of creativity and insight into consumer tastes. It's no doubt then that this former fashion stylist came up with the ultimate catch phrase to capture the emotion that clients want to draw from their users: "craveability." The phrase was a hit with the audience and panelists alike. Sometime later in the discussion, Seiber remarked, "designers strive to apply craveability to products, and I do so for restaurants in my case." Craveabilty is also very applicable to interaction design. Creating straightforward and smooth workflows for users of Oracle Applications is a primary goal for my colleagues. We want our users to really enjoy working with our products where it makes them more efficient and better at their jobs. That's our "craveability." Patanjali Venkatacharya asked the panel, "if a design's "craveability" appeals to some cultures but not to others, then what is the impact to the food or product design process?" Rohn stated that "taste is part nature and part nurture" and that the design must take the full context of a product's usage into consideration. Kessler added, "good design is about understanding the context" that the experience necessitates. Seiber remarked how important seat comfort is for diners and how the quality of seating will add so much to the complete dining experience. Sometimes if these non-food factors are not well executed, they can also take away from an otherwise pleasant dining experience. Kessler recounted a time when he was dining at a restaurant that actually had very good food, but the photographs hanging on all the walls did not fit in with the overall décor and created a negative overall dining experience. While the tastiness of the food is critical to a restaurant's success, it is a captivating complete user experience, as in interaction design, which will keep customers coming back and ultimately making the restaurant a hit. Figure 2. Patanjali Venkatacharya enjoyed the Sardinian flatbread salad. As a surprise Chef Powers brought out a signature dish from Shaun's restaurant for all the panelists to sample and critique. The Sardinian flatbread dish showcased Atlanta's taste for fresh and local produce and cheese at its finest as a salad served on a crispy flavorful flat bread. Hardeman said it could be photographed from any angle, a high compliment coming from a food stylist. Seiber really enjoyed the colors that the dish brought together and thought it would be served very well in a casual restaurant on a summer's day. The panel really appreciated the taste and quality of the different components and how the rosemary brought all the flavors together. Seiber remarked that "a lot of effort goes into the appearance of simplicity." Rohn indicated that the same notion holds true with software user interface design. A tremendous amount of work goes into crafting straightforward interfaces, including user research, prototyping, design iterations, and usability studies. Design criticism for food and software interfaces clearly share many similarities. Both areas value expert opinions and user feedback. Both areas understand the importance of great design needing to work well in its context. Last but not least, both food and interaction design criticism value "craveability" and how having users excited about experiencing and enjoying the designs is an important goal. Now if we can just improve the taste of software user interfaces, people may choose to dine on their enterprise applications over a fresh organic salad.

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Developing with Fluid UI – The Fluid Home Page

- by Dave Bain

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} The first place to start with Fluid UI is with the Fluid Home Page. Sometimes it’s referred to as the landing page, but it’s formally called the Fluid Home Page. It’s delivered with PeopleTools 8.54, and the nice thing about it is, it’s a component. That’s one thing you’ll discover with Fluid UI. Fluid UI is built int PeopleTools with Fluid UI. The Home Page is a component, the tiles or grouplets are group boxes, and the search and prompt pages are just pages. It makes it easy to find things, customize and brand the applications (and of course to see what’s going on) when you can open it in AppDesigner. To see what makes a component fluid, let’s start with the Fluid Home Page. It’s a component called PT_LANDINGPAGE. You can open it in AppDesigner and see what’s unique and different about Fluid UI. If you open the Component Properties dialog, you’ll see a new tab called Fluid On the Component Properties Fluid tab you’ll see the most important checkbox of all, Fluid Mode. That is the one flag that will tell PeopleSoft if the component is Fluid (responsive, dynamic layout) or classic (pixel perfect). Now that you know it’s a single flag, you know that a component can’t be both Fluid UI and Classic at the same time, it’s one or the other. There are some other interesting fields on this page. The Small Form Factor Optimized field tells us whether or not to display this on a small device (think smarphone). Header Toolbar Actions offer standard options that are set at the component level so you have complete control of the components header bar. You’ll notice that the PT_LANDINGPAGE has got some PostBuild PeopleCode. That’s to build the grouplets that are used to launch Fluid UI Pages (more about those later). Probably not a good idea to mess with that code! The next thing to look at is the Page Definition for the PT_LANDINGPAGE component. When you open the page PT_LANDINGPAGE it will look different than anything you’ve ever seen. You’re probably thinking “What’s up with all the group boxes”? That is where Fluid UI is so different. In classic PeopleSoft, you put a button, field, group, any control on a page and that’s where it shows up, no questions asked. With Fluid UI, everything is positioned relative to something else. That’s why there are so many containers (you know them as group boxes). They are UI objects that are used for dynamic positioning. The Fluid Home Page has some special behavior and special settings. The first is in the Web Profile Configuration settings (Main Menu->PeopleTools->Web Profile->Web Profile Configuration from the main menu). There are two checkboxes that control the behavior of Fluid UI. Disable Fluid Mode and Disable Fluid On Desktop. Disable Fluid Mode prevents any Fluid UI component from being run from this installation. This is a web profile setting for users that want to run later versions of PeopleTools but only want to run Classic PeopleSoft pages. The second setting, Disable Fluid On Desktop allows the Fluid UI to be run on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, but prevents Fluid UI from running on a desktop computer. Fluid UI settings are also make in My Personalizations (Main Menu->My Personalizations from the Main Menu), in the General Options section. In that section, each user has the choice to determine the home page for their desktop and for tablets. Now that you know the Fluid UI landing page is just a component, and the profile and personalization settings, you should be able to launch one. It’s pretty easy to add a menu using Structure and Content, just make sure the proper security is set up. You’ll have to run a Fluid UI supported browser in order to see it. Latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and IE will do. Check the certification page on MOS for all the details. When you open the first Fluid Landing Page, there’s not much there. Not to worry, we’ll get some content on it soon. Take a moment to navigate around and look at some of the header actions that were set up from the component properties. The home button takes you back to the classic system. You won’t see any notifications and the personalization doesn’t have any content to add. The NavBar icon on the top right has a lot of content, including a Navigator and Classic home. Spend some time looking through what’s available. Stay tuned for more. Next up is adding some content. Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:8.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:107%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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Cloud Computing = Elasticity * Availability

- by Herve Roggero

What is cloud computing? Is hosting the same thing as cloud computing? Are you running a cloud if you already use virtual machines? What is the difference between Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and a cloud provider? And the list goes on… these questions keep coming up and all try to fundamentally explain what “cloud” means relative to other concepts. At the risk of over simplification, answering these questions becomes simpler once you understand the primary foundations of cloud computing: Elasticity and Availability. Elasticity The basic value proposition of cloud computing is to pay as you go, and to pay for what you use. This implies that an application can expand and contract on demand, across all its tiers (presentation layer, services, database, security…). This also implies that application components can grow independently from each other. So if you need more storage for your database, you should be able to grow that tier without affecting, reconfiguring or changing the other tiers. Basically, cloud applications behave like a sponge; when you add water to a sponge, it grows in size; in the application world, the more customers you add, the more it grows. Pure IaaS providers will provide certain benefits, specifically in terms of operating costs, but an IaaS provider will not help you in making your applications elastic; neither will Virtual Machines. The smallest elasticity unit of an IaaS provider and a Virtual Machine environment is a server (physical or virtual). While adding servers in a datacenter helps in achieving scale, it is hardly enough. The application has yet to use this hardware. If the process of adding computing resources is not transparent to the application, the application is not elastic. As you can see from the above description, designing for the cloud is not about more servers; it is about designing an application for elasticity regardless of the underlying server farm. Availability The fact of the matter is that making applications highly available is hard. It requires highly specialized tools and trained staff. On top of it, it's expensive. Many companies are required to run multiple data centers due to high availability requirements. In some organizations, some data centers are simply on standby, waiting to be used in a case of a failover. Other organizations are able to achieve a certain level of success with active/active data centers, in which all available data centers serve incoming user requests. While achieving high availability for services is relatively simple, establishing a highly available database farm is far more complex. In fact it is so complex that many companies establish yearly tests to validate failover procedures. To a certain degree certain IaaS provides can assist with complex disaster recovery planning and setting up data centers that can achieve successful failover. However the burden is still on the corporation to manage and maintain such an environment, including regular hardware and software upgrades. Cloud computing on the other hand removes most of the disaster recovery requirements by hiding many of the underlying complexities. Cloud Providers A cloud provider is an infrastructure provider offering additional tools to achieve application elasticity and availability that are not usually available on-premise. For example Microsoft Azure provides a simple configuration screen that makes it possible to run 1 or 100 web sites by clicking a button or two on a screen (simplifying provisioning), and soon SQL Azure will offer Data Federation to allow database sharding (which allows you to scale the database tier seamlessly and automatically). Other cloud providers offer certain features that are not available on-premise as well, such as the Amazon SC3 (Simple Storage Service) which gives you virtually unlimited storage capabilities for simple data stores, which is somewhat equivalent to the Microsoft Azure Table offering (offering a server-independent data storage model). Unlike IaaS providers, cloud providers give you the necessary tools to adopt elasticity as part of your application architecture. Some cloud providers offer built-in high availability that get you out of the business of configuring clustered solutions, or running multiple data centers. Some cloud providers will give you more control (which puts some of that burden back on the customers' shoulder) and others will tend to make high availability totally transparent. For example, SQL Azure provides high availability automatically which would be very difficult to achieve (and very costly) on premise. Keep in mind that each cloud provider has its strengths and weaknesses; some are better at achieving transparent scalability and server independence than others. Not for Everyone Note however that it is up to you to leverage the elasticity capabilities of a cloud provider, as discussed previously; if you build a website that does not need to scale, for which elasticity is not important, then you can use a traditional host provider unless you also need high availability. Leveraging the technologies of cloud providers can be difficult and can become a journey for companies that build their solutions in a scale up fashion. Cloud computing promises to address cost containment and scalability of applications with built-in high availability. If your application does not need to scale or you do not need high availability, then cloud computing may not be for you. In fact, you may pay a premium to run your applications with cloud providers due to the underlying technologies built specifically for scalability and availability requirements. And as such, the cloud is not for everyone. Consistent Customer Experience, Predictable Cost With all its complexities, buzz and foggy definition, cloud computing boils down to a simple objective: consistent customer experience at a predictable cost. The objective of a cloud solution is to provide the same user experience to your last customer than the first, while keeping your operating costs directly proportional to the number of customers you have. Making your applications elastic and highly available across all its tiers, with as much automation as possible, achieves the first objective of a consistent customer experience. And the ability to expand and contract the infrastructure footprint of your application dynamically achieves the cost containment objectives. Herve Roggero is a SQL Azure MVP and co-author of Pro SQL Azure (APress). He is the co-founder of Blue Syntax Consulting (www.bluesyntax.net), a company focusing on cloud computing technologies helping customers understand and adopt cloud computing technologies. For more information contact herve at hroggero @ bluesyntax.net .

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Massive Silverlight Giveaway! DevExpress , Syncfusion, Crypto Obfuscator and SL Spy!

- by mbcrump

Oh my, have we grown! Maybe I should change the name to Multiple Silverlight Giveaways. So far, my Silverlight giveaways have been such a success that I’m going to be able to give away more than one Silverlight product every month. Last month, we gave away 3 great products. 1) ComponentOne Silverlight Controls 2) ComponentOne XAP Optimizer (with obfuscation) and 3) Silverlight Spy. This month, we will give away 4 great Silverlight products and have 4 different winners. This way the Silverlight community can grow with more than just one person winning all the prizes. This month we will be giving away: DevExpress Silverlight Controls – Over 50+ Silverlight Controls Syncfusion User Interface Edition - Create stunning line of business silverlight applications with a wide range of components including a high performance grid, docking manager, chart, gauge, scheduler and much more. Crypto Obfuscator – Works for all .NET including Silverlight/Windows Phone 7. Silverlight Spy – provides a license EVERY month for this giveaway. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Win a FREE developer’s license of one of the products listed above! 4 winners will be announced on April 1st, 2011! To be entered into the contest do the following things: Subscribe to my feed. – Use Google Reader, email or whatever is best for you. Leave a comment below with a valid email account (I WILL NOT share this info with anyone.) Retweet the following : I just entered to win free #Silverlight controls from @mbcrump . Register here: http://mcrump.me/fTSmB8 ! Don’t change the URL because this will allow me to track the users that Tweet this page. Don’t forget to visit each of the vendors sites because they made this possible. MichaelCrump.Net provides Silverlight Giveaways every month. You can also see the latest giveaway by bookmarking http://giveaways.michaelcrump.net . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DevExpress Silverlight Controls Let’s take a quick look at some of the software that is provided in this giveaway. Before we get started with the Silverlight Controls, here is a couple of links to bookmark for the DevExpress Silverlight Controls: The Live Demos of the Silverlight Controls is located here. Great Video Tutorials of the Silverlight Controls are here. One thing that I liked about the DevExpress is how easy it was to find demos of each control. After you install the controls the following Program Group appears complete with “demos” that include full-source. So, the first question that you may ask is, “What is included?” Here is the official list below. I wanted to show several of the controls that I think developers will use the most. The Book – Very rich animation between switching pages. Very easy to add your own images and custom text. The Menu – This is another control that just looked great. You can easily add images to the menu items with a few lines of XAML. The Window / Dialog Box – You can use this control to make a very beautiful “Wizard” to help your users navigate between pages. This is useful in setup or installation. Calculator – This would be useful for any type of Banking app. Also a first that I’ve seen from a 3rd party Control company. DatePicker – This controls feels a lot smoother than the one provided by Microsoft. It also provides the ability to “Clear” the selection. Overall the DevExpress Silverlight Controls feature a lot of quality controls that you should check out. You can go ahead and download a trial version of it right now by clicking here. If you win the contest you can simply enter your registration key and continue using the product without reinstalling. Syncfusion User Interface Edition Before we get started with the Syncfusion User Interface Edition, here is a couple of links to bookmark. The Live Demos can be found here. You can download a demo of it now at http://www.syncfusion.com/downloads/evalstart. After you install the Syncfusion, you can view the dashboard to run locally installed samples. You may also download the documentation to your local machine if needed. Since the name of the package is “User Interface Edition”, I decided to share several samples that struck me as “awesome”. Dashboard Gauges – I was very impressed with the various gauges they have included. The digital clock also looks very impressive. Diagram – The diagrams are also very easy to build. In the sample project below you can drag/drop the shapes onto the content pane. More complex lines like the Bezier lines are also easy to create using Syncfusion. Scheduling – Another strong component was the Scheduling with built-in support for Themes. Tools – If all of that wasn’t enough, it also comes with a nice pack of essential tools. Syncfusion has a nice variety of Silverlight Controls that you should check out. You can go ahead and download a trial version of it right now by clicking here. Crypto Obfuscator The following feature set is what is important to me in an Obfuscator since I am a Silverlight/WP7 Developer: And thankfully this is what you get in Crypto Obfuscator. You can download a trial version right now if you want to go ahead and play with it. Let’s spend a few moments taking a look at the application. After you have installed Crypto Obfuscator you will see the following screen: After you click on Assemblies you have the option to add your .XAP file in: I went ahead and loaded my .xap file from a Silverlight Application. At this point, you can simply save your project and hit “Obfuscate” and your done. You don’t have to mess with any of the other settings if you don’t want too. Of course, you can change the settings and add obfuscation rules, watermarks and signing if you wish. After Obfuscation, it looks like this in .NET Reflector: I was trying to browse through methods and it actually crashed Reflector. This confirms the level of protection the obfuscator is providing. If this were a commercial application that my team built, I would have a huge smile on my face right now. Crypto Obfuscator is a great product and I hope you will spend the time learning more about it. Silverlight Spy Silverlight Spy is a runtime inspector tool that will tell you pretty much everything that is going on with the application. Basically, you give it a URL that contains a Silverlight application and you can explore the element tree, events, xaml and so much more. This has already been reviewed on MichaelCrump.net. _________________________________________________________________________________________ Thanks for reading and don’t forget to leave a comment below in order to win one of the four prizes available! Subscribe to my feed

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Oracle Flashback Technologies - Overview

- by Sridhar_R-Oracle

Oracle Flashback Technologies - IntroductionIn his May 29th 2014 blog, my colleague Joe Meeks introduced Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) and discussed both planned and unplanned outages. Let’s take a closer look at unplanned outages. These can be caused by physical failures (e.g., server, storage, network, file deletion, physical corruption, site failures) or by logical failures – cases where all components and files are physically available, but data is incorrect or corrupt. These logical failures are usually caused by human errors or application logic errors. This blog series focuses on these logical errors – what causes them and how to address and recover from them using Oracle Database Flashback. In this introductory blog post, I’ll provide an overview of the Oracle Database Flashback technologies and will discuss the features in detail in future blog posts. Let’s get started. We are all human beings (unless a machine is reading this), and making mistakes is a part of what we do…often what we do best! We “fat finger”, we spill drinks on keyboards, unplug the wrong cables, etc. In addition, many of us, in our lives as DBAs or developers, must have observed, caused, or corrected one or more of the following unpleasant events: Accidentally updated a table with wrong values !! Performed a batch update that went wrong - due to logical errors in the code !! Dropped a table !! How do DBAs typically recover from these types of errors? First, data needs to be restored and recovered to the point-in-time when the error occurred (incomplete or point-in-time recovery). Moreover, depending on the type of fault, it’s possible that some services – or even the entire database – would have to be taken down during the recovery process.Apart from error conditions, there are other questions that need to be addressed as part of the investigation. For example, what did the data look like in the morning, prior to the error? What were the various changes to the row(s) between two timestamps? Who performed the transaction and how can it be reversed? Oracle Database includes built-in Flashback technologies, with features that address these challenges and questions, and enable you to perform faster, easier, and convenient recovery from logical corruptions. HistoryFlashback Query, the first Flashback Technology, was introduced in Oracle 9i. It provides a simple, powerful and completely non-disruptive mechanism for data verification and recovery from logical errors, and enables users to view the state of data at a previous point in time.Flashback Technologies were further enhanced in Oracle 10g, to provide fast, easy recovery at the database, table, row, and even at a transaction level.Oracle Database 11g introduced an innovative method to manage and query long-term historical data with Flashback Data Archive. The 11g release also introduced Flashback Transaction, which provides an easy, one-step operation to back out a transaction. Oracle Database versions 11.2.0.2 and beyond further enhanced the performance of these features. Note that all the features listed here work without requiring any kind of restore operation.In addition, Flashback features are fully supported with the new multi-tenant capabilities introduced with Oracle Database 12c, Flashback Features Oracle Flashback Database enables point-in-time-recovery of the entire database without requiring a traditional restore and recovery operation. It rewinds the entire database to a specified point in time in the past by undoing all the changes that were made since that time.Oracle Flashback Table enables an entire table or a set of tables to be recovered to a point in time in the past.Oracle Flashback Drop enables accidentally dropped tables and all dependent objects to be restored.Oracle Flashback Query enables data to be viewed at a point-in-time in the past. This feature can be used to view and reconstruct data that was lost due to unintentional change(s) or deletion(s). This feature can also be used to build self-service error correction into applications, empowering end-users to undo and correct their errors.Oracle Flashback Version Query offers the ability to query the historical changes to data between two points in time or system change numbers (SCN) Oracle Flashback Transaction Query enables changes to be examined at the transaction level. This capability can be used to diagnose problems, perform analysis, audit transactions, and even revert the transaction by undoing SQLOracle Flashback Transaction is a procedure used to back-out a transaction and its dependent transactions.Flashback technologies eliminate the need for a traditional restore and recovery process to fix logical corruptions or make enquiries. Using these technologies, you can recover from the error in the same amount of time it took to generate the error. All the Flashback features can be accessed either via SQL command line (or) via Enterprise Manager. Most of the Flashback technologies depend on the available UNDO to retrieve older data. The following table describes the various Flashback technologies: their purpose, dependencies and situations where each individual technology can be used. Example Syntax Error investigation related:The purpose is to investigate what went wrong and what the values were at certain points in timeFlashback Queries ( select .. as of SCN | Timestamp ) - Helps to see the value of a row/set of rows at a point in timeFlashback Version Queries ( select .. versions between SCN | Timestamp and SCN | Timestamp) - Helps determine how the value evolved between certain SCNs or between timestamps Flashback Transaction Queries (select .. XID=) - Helps to understand how the transaction caused the changes.Error correction related:The purpose is to fix the error and correct the problems,Flashback Table (flashback table .. to SCN | Timestamp) - To rewind the table to a particular timestamp or SCN to reverse unwanted updates Flashback Drop (flashback table .. to before drop ) - To undrop or undelete a table Flashback Database (flashback database to SCN | Restore Point ) - This is the rewind button for Oracle databases. You can revert the entire database to a particular point in time. It is a fast way to perform a PITR (point-in-time recovery). Flashback Transaction (DBMS_FLASHBACK.TRANSACTION_BACKOUT(XID..)) - To reverse a transaction and its related transactions Advanced use cases Flashback technology is integrated into Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) and Oracle Data Guard. So, apart from the basic use cases mentioned above, the following use cases are addressed using Oracle Flashback. Block Media recovery by RMAN - to perform block level recovery Snapshot Standby - where the standby is temporarily converted to a read/write environment for testing, backup, or migration purposes Re-instate old primary in a Data Guard environment – this avoids the need to restore an old backup and perform a recovery to make it a new standby. Guaranteed Restore Points - to bring back the entire database to an older point-in-time in a guaranteed way. and so on..I hope this introductory overview helps you understand how Flashback features can be used to investigate and recover from logical errors. As mentioned earlier, I will take a deeper-dive into to some of the critical Flashback features in my upcoming blogs and address common use cases.

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WebSocket Applications using Java: JSR 356 Early Draft Now Available (TOTD #183)

- by arungupta

WebSocket provide a full-duplex and bi-directional communication protocol over a single TCP connection. JSR 356 is defining a standard API for creating WebSocket applications in the Java EE 7 Platform. This Tip Of The Day (TOTD) will provide an introduction to WebSocket and how the JSR is evolving to support the programming model. First, a little primer on WebSocket! WebSocket is a combination of IETF RFC 6455 Protocol and W3C JavaScript API (still a Candidate Recommendation). The protocol defines an opening handshake and data transfer. The API enables Web pages to use the WebSocket protocol for two-way communication with the remote host. Unlike HTTP, there is no need to create a new TCP connection and send a chock-full of headers for every message exchange between client and server. The WebSocket protocol defines basic message framing, layered over TCP. Once the initial handshake happens using HTTP Upgrade, the client and server can send messages to each other, independent from the other. There are no pre-defined message exchange patterns of request/response or one-way between client and and server. These need to be explicitly defined over the basic protocol. The communication between client and server is pretty symmetric but there are two differences: A client initiates a connection to a server that is listening for a WebSocket request. A client connects to one server using a URI. A server may listen to requests from multiple clients on the same URI. Other than these two difference, the client and server behave symmetrically after the opening handshake. In that sense, they are considered as "peers". After a successful handshake, clients and servers transfer data back and forth in conceptual units referred as "messages". On the wire, a message is composed of one or more frames. Application frames carry payload intended for the application and can be text or binary data. Control frames carry data intended for protocol-level signaling. Now lets talk about the JSR! The Java API for WebSocket is worked upon as JSR 356 in the Java Community Process. This will define a standard API for building WebSocket applications. This JSR will provide support for: Creating WebSocket Java components to handle bi-directional WebSocket conversations Initiating and intercepting WebSocket events Creation and consumption of WebSocket text and binary messages The ability to define WebSocket protocols and content models for an application Configuration and management of WebSocket sessions, like timeouts, retries, cookies, connection pooling Specification of how WebSocket application will work within the Java EE security model Tyrus is the Reference Implementation for JSR 356 and is already integrated in GlassFish 4.0 Promoted Builds. And finally some code! The API allows to create WebSocket endpoints using annotations and interface. This TOTD will show a simple sample using annotations. A subsequent blog will show more advanced samples. A POJO can be converted to a WebSocket endpoint by specifying @WebSocketEndpoint and @WebSocketMessage. @WebSocketEndpoint(path="/hello")public class HelloBean { @WebSocketMessage public String sayHello(String name) { return "Hello " + name + "!"; }} @WebSocketEndpoint marks this class as a WebSocket endpoint listening at URI defined by the path attribute. The @WebSocketMessage identifies the method that will receive the incoming WebSocket message. This first method parameter is injected with payload of the incoming message. In this case it is assumed that the payload is text-based. It can also be of the type byte[] in case the payload is binary. A custom object may be specified if decoders attribute is specified in the @WebSocketEndpoint. This attribute will provide a list of classes that define how a custom object can be decoded. This method can also take an optional Session parameter. This is injected by the runtime and capture a conversation between two endpoints. The return type of the method can be String, byte[] or a custom object. The encoders attribute on @WebSocketEndpoint need to define how a custom object can be encoded. The client side is an index.jsp with embedded JavaScript. The JSP body looks like: <div style="text-align: center;"> <form action=""> <input onclick="say_hello()" value="Say Hello" type="button"> <input id="nameField" name="name" value="WebSocket" type="text"><br> </form> </div> <div id="output"></div> The code is relatively straight forward. It has an HTML form with a button that invokes say_hello() method and a text field named nameField. A div placeholder is available for displaying the output. Now, lets take a look at some JavaScript code: <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> var wsUri = "ws://localhost:8080/HelloWebSocket/hello"; var websocket = new WebSocket(wsUri); websocket.onopen = function(evt) { onOpen(evt) }; websocket.onmessage = function(evt) { onMessage(evt) }; websocket.onerror = function(evt) { onError(evt) }; function init() { output = document.getElementById("output"); } function say_hello() { websocket.send(nameField.value); writeToScreen("SENT: " + nameField.value); } This application is deployed as "HelloWebSocket.war" (download here) on GlassFish 4.0 promoted build 57. So the WebSocket endpoint is listening at "ws://localhost:8080/HelloWebSocket/hello". A new WebSocket connection is initiated by specifying the URI to connect to. The JavaScript API defines callback methods that are invoked when the connection is opened (onOpen), closed (onClose), error received (onError), or a message from the endpoint is received (onMessage). The client API has several send methods that transmit data over the connection. This particular script sends text data in the say_hello method using nameField's value from the HTML shown earlier. Each click on the button sends the textbox content to the endpoint over a WebSocket connection and receives a response based upon implementation in the sayHello method shown above. How to test this out ? Download the entire source project here or just the WAR file. Download GlassFish4.0 build 57 or later and unzip. Start GlassFish as "asadmin start-domain". Deploy the WAR file as "asadmin deploy HelloWebSocket.war". Access the application at http://localhost:8080/HelloWebSocket/index.jsp. After clicking on "Say Hello" button, the output would look like: Here are some references for you: WebSocket - Protocol and JavaScript API JSR 356: Java API for WebSocket - Specification (Early Draft) and Implementation (already integrated in GlassFish 4 promoted builds) Subsequent blogs will discuss the following topics (not necessary in that order) ... Binary data as payload Custom payloads using encoder/decoder Error handling Interface-driven WebSocket endpoint Java client API Client and Server configuration Security Subprotocols Extensions Other topics from the API Capturing WebSocket on-the-wire messages

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The Business of Winning Innovation: An Exclusive Blog Series

- by Kerrie Foy

"The Business of Winning Innovation” is a series of articles authored by Oracle Agile PLM experts on what it takes to make innovation a successful and lucrative competitive advantage. Our customers have proven Agile PLM applications to be enormously flexible and comprehensive, so we’ve launched this article series to showcase some of the most fascinating, value-packed use cases. In this article by Keith Colonna, we kick-off the series by taking a look at the science side of innovation within the Consumer Products industry and how PLM can help companies innovate faster, cheaper, smarter. This article will review how innovation has become the lifeline for growth within consumer products companies and how certain companies are “winning” by creating a competitive advantage for themselves by taking a more enterprise-wide,systematic approach to “innovation”. Managing the Science of Innovation within the Consumer Products Industry By: Keith Colonna, Value Chain Solution Manager, Oracle The consumer products (CP) industry is very mature and competitive. Most companies within this industry have saturated North America (NA) with their products thus maximizing their NA growth potential. Future growth is expected to come from either expansion outside of North America and/or by way of new ideas and products. Innovation plays an integral role in both of these strategies, whether you’re innovating business processes or the products themselves, and may cause several challenges for the typical CP company, Becoming more innovative is both an art and a science. Most CP companies are very good at the art of coming up with new innovative ideas, but many struggle with perfecting the science aspect that involves the best practice processes that help companies quickly turn ideas into sellable products and services. Symptoms and Causes of Business Pain Struggles associated with the science of innovation show up in a variety of ways, like: · Establishing and storing innovative product ideas and data · Funneling these ideas to the chosen few · Time to market cycle time and on-time launch rates · Success rates, or how often the best idea gets chosen · Imperfect decision making (i.e. the ability to kill projects that are not projected to be winners) · Achieving financial goals · Return on R&D investment · Communicating internally and externally as more outsource partners are added globally · Knowing your new product pipeline and project status These challenges (and others) can be consolidated into three root causes: A lack of visibility Poor data with limited access The inability to truly collaborate enterprise-wide throughout your extended value chain Choose the Right Remedy Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions are uniquely designed to help companies solve these types challenges and their root causes. However, PLM solutions can vary widely in terms of configurability, functionality, time-to-value, etc. Business leaders should evaluate PLM solution in terms of their own business drivers and long-term vision to determine the right fit. Many of these solutions are point solutions that can help you cure only one or two business pains in the short term. Others have been designed to serve other industries with different needs. Then there are those solutions that demo well but are owned by companies that are either unable or unwilling to continuously improve their solution to stay abreast of the ever changing needs of the CP industry to grow through innovation. What the Right PLM Solution Should Do for You Based on more than twenty years working in the CP industry, I recommend investing in a single solution that can help you solve all of the issues associated with the science of innovation in a totally integrated fashion. By integration I mean the (1) integration of the all of the processes associated with the development, maintenance and delivery of your product data, and (2) the integration, or harmonization of this product data with other downstream sources, like ERP, product catalogues and the GS1 Global Data Synchronization Network (or GDSN, which is now a CP industry requirement for doing business with most retailers). The right PLM solution should help you: Increase Revenue. A best practice PLM solution should help a company grow its revenues by consolidating product development cycle-time and helping companies get new and improved products to market sooner. PLM should also eliminate many of the root causes for a product being returned, refused and/or reclaimed (which takes away from top-line growth) by creating an enterprise-wide, collaborative, workflow-driven environment. Reduce Costs. A strong PLM solution should help shave many unnecessary costs that companies typically take for granted. Rationalizing SKU’s, components (ingredients and packaging) and suppliers is a major opportunity at most companies that PLM should help address. A natural outcome of this rationalization is lower direct material spend and a reduction of inventory. Another cost cutting opportunity comes with PLM when it helps companies avoid certain costs associated with process inefficiencies that lead to scrap, rework, excess and obsolete inventory, poor end of life administration, higher cost of quality and regulatory and increased expediting. Mitigate Risk. Risks are the hardest to quantify but can be the most costly to a company. Food safety, recalls, line shutdowns, customer dissatisfaction and, worst of all, the potential tarnishing of your brands are a few of the debilitating risks that CP companies deal with on a daily basis. These risks are so uniquely severe that they require an enterprise PLM solution specifically designed for the CP industry that safeguards product information and processes while still allowing the art of innovation to flourish. Many CP companies have already created a winning advantage by leveraging a single, best practice PLM solution to establish an enterprise-wide, systematic approach to innovation. Oracle’s Answer for the Consumer Products Industry Oracle is dedicated to solving the growth and innovation challenges facing the CP industry. Oracle’s Agile Product Lifecycle Management for Process solution was originally developed with and for CP companies and is driven by a specialized development staff solely focused on maintaining and continuously improving the solution per the latest industry requirements. Agile PLM for Process helps CP companies handle all of the processes associated with managing the science of the innovation process, including: specification management, new product development/project and portfolio management, formulation optimization, supplier management, and quality and regulatory compliance to name a few. And as I mentioned earlier, integration is absolutely critical. Many Oracle CP customers, both with Oracle ERP systems and non-Oracle ERP systems, report benefits from Oracle’s Agile PLM for Process. In future articles we will explain in greater detail how both existing Oracle customers (like Gallo, Smuckers, Land-O-Lakes and Starbucks) and new Oracle customers (like ConAgra, Tyson, McDonalds and Heinz) have all realized the benefits of Agile PLM for Process and its integration to their ERP systems. More to Come Stay tuned for more articles in our blog series “The Business of Winning Innovation.” While we will also feature articles focused on other industries, look forward to more on how Agile PLM for Process addresses innovation challenges facing the CP industry. Additional topics include: Innovation Data Management (IDM), New Product Development (NPD), Product Quality Management (PQM), Menu Management,Private Label Management, and more! . Watch this video for more info about Agile PLM for Process

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Next-Generation Data Integration on Oracle Exadata

- by Julien Testut

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Companies are currently faced with increasing data volumes and retention times while simultaneously batch windows are shrinking. In the ‘Next-Generation Data Integration on Oracle Exadata’ session we will be discussing how Oracle with its innovative Data Integration solution along with Exadata can help companies tackle that challenge. Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate provide industry-leading performance and scalability for data integration on Oracle Exadata. They are both uniquely designed to take full advantage of the power of the database and to eliminate unnecessary middle-tier components which can often be bottlenecks for data movement and transformation. Combined with the extreme performance provided by Exadata our Data Integration products help companies move towards a more efficient and flexible data integration infrastructure. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} If you’re interested in hearing more about how our customers maximize the performance of their Exadata systems while minimizing batch windows, all without adding more hardware resources join us for the following session: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Next-Generation Data Integration on Oracle Exadata Thursday October, 4th - 11:15AM - 12:15PM Moscone West – Room 3005 We also have many other exciting sessions including 'Oracle Data Integrator Product Update and Future Strategy' on October 2nd at 1:15PM in Moscone West Room 3005. In this session we will discuss the ODI roadmap and its integration with engineered systems such as the Oracle Big Data Appliance. It's a session not to be missed! You can find a list of all the Data Integration sessions happening at Oracle OpenWorld in this document: Focus On Data Integration. If you will not be able to come to OpenWorld, for more information please check out our data sheet Oracle Data Integration Solutions and the Oracle Exadata Database Machine. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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People, Process & Engagement: WebCenter Partner Keste

- by Michael Snow

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Within the WebCenter group here at Oracle, discussions about people, process and engagement cross over many vertical industries and products. Amidst our growing partner ecosystem, the community provides us insight into great customer use cases every day. Such is the case with our partner, Keste, who provides us a guest post on our blog today with an overview of their innovative solution for a customer in the transportation industry. Keste is an Oracle software solutions and development company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. As a Platinum member of the Oracle® PartnerNetwork, Keste designs, develops and deploys custom solutions that automate complex business processes. Seamless Customer Self-Service Experience in the Trucking Industry with Oracle WebCenter Portal Keste, Oracle Platinum Partner Customer Overview Omnitracs, Inc., a Qualcomm company provides mobility solutions for trucking fleets to companies in the transportation industry. Omnitracs’ mobility services include basic communications such as text as well as advanced monitoring services such as GPS tracking, temperature tracking of perishable goods, load tracking and weighting distribution, and many others. Customer Business Needs Already the leading provider of mobility solutions for large trucking fleets, they chose to target smaller trucking fleets as new customers. However their existing high-touch customer support method would not be a cost effective or scalable method to manage and service these smaller customers. Omnitracs needed to provide several self-service features to make customer support more scalable while keeping customer satisfaction levels high and the costs manageable. The solution also had to be very intuitive and easy to use. The systems that Omnitracs sells to these trucking customers require professional installation and smaller customers need to track and schedule the installation. Information captured in Oracle eBusiness Suite needed to be readily available for new customers to track these purchases and delivery details. Omnitracs wanted a high impact User Interface to significantly improve customer experience with the ability to integrate with EBS, provisioning systems as well as CRM systems that were already implemented. Omnitracs also wanted to build an architecture platform that could potentially be extended to other Portals. Omnitracs’ stated goal was to deliver an “eBay-like” or “Amazon-like” experience for all of their customers so that they could reach a much broader market beyond their large company customer base. Solution Overview In order to manage the increased complexity, the growing support needs of global customers and improve overall product time-to-market in a cost-effective manner, IT began to deliver a self-service model. This self service model not only transformed numerous business processes but is also allowing the business to keep up with the growing demands of the (internal and external) customers. This solution was a customer service Portal that provided self service capabilities for large and small customers alike for Activation of mobility products, managing add-on applications for the devices (much like the Apple App Store), transferring services when trucks are sold to other companies as well as deactivation all without the involvement of a call service agent or sending multiple emails to different Omnitracs contacts. This is a conceptual view of the Customer Portal showing the details of the components that make up the solution. 12.00 The portal application for transactions was entirely built using ADF 11g R2. Omnitracs’ business had a pressing requirement to have a portal available 24/7 for its customers. Since there were interactions with EBS in the back-end, the downtimes on the EBS would negate this availability. Omnitracs devised a decoupling strategy at the database side for the EBS data. The decoupling of the database was done using Oracle Data Guard and completely insulated the solution from any eBusiness Suite down time. The customer has no knowledge whether eBS is running or not. Here are two sample screenshots of the portal application built in Oracle ADF. Customer Benefits The Customer Portal not only provided the scalability to grow the business but also provided the seamless integration with other disparate applications. Some of the key benefits are: Improved Customer Experience: With a modern look and feel and a Portal that has the aspects of an App Store, the customer experience was significantly improved. Page response times went from several seconds to sub-second for all of the pages. Enabled new product launches: After successfully dominating the large fleet market, Omnitracs now has a scalable solution to sell and manage smaller fleet customers giving them a huge advantage over their nearest competitors. Dozens of new customers have been acquired via this portal through an onboarding process that now takes minutes Seamless Integrations Improves Customer Support: ADF 11gR2 allowed Omnitracs to bring a diverse list of applications into one integrated solution. This provided a seamless experience for customers to route them from Marketing focused application to a customer-oriented portal. Internally, it also allowed Sales Representatives to have an integrated flow for taking a prospect through the various steps to onboard them as a customer. Key integrations included: Unity Core Salesforce.com Merchant e-Solution for credit card Custom Omnitracs Applications like CUPS and AUTO Security utilizing OID and OVD Back end integration with EBS (Data Guard) and iQ Database Business Impact Significant business impacts were realized through the launch of customer portal. It not only allows the business to push through in underserved segments, but also reduces the time it needs to spend on customer support—allowing the business to focus more on sales and identifying the market for new products. Some of the Immediate Benefits are The entire onboarding process is now completely automated and now completes in minutes. This represents an 85% productivity improvement over their previous processes. And it was 160 times faster! With the success of this self-service solution, the business is now targeting about 3X customer growth in the next five years. This represents a tripling of their overall customer base and significant downstream revenue for the ongoing services. 90%+ improvement of customer onboarding and management process by utilizing, single sign on integration using OID/OAM solution, performance improvements and new self-service functionality Unified login for all Customers, Partners and Internal Users enables login to a common portal and seamless access to all other integrated applications targeted at the respective audience Significantly improved customer experience with a better look and feel with a more user experience focused Portal screens. Helped sales of the new product by having an easy way of ordering and activating the product. Data Guard helped increase availability of the Portal to 99%+ and make it independent of EBS downtime. This gave customers the feel of high availability of the portal application. Some of the anticipated longer term Benefits are: Platform that can be leveraged to launch any new product introduction and enable all product teams to reach new customers and new markets Easy integration with content management to allow business owners more control of the product catalog Overall reduced TCO with standardization of the Oracle platform Managed IT support cost savings through optimization of technology skills needed to support and modify this solution ------------------------------------------------------------ 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 -"/ /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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Using Apache FOP from .NET level

- by Lukasz Kurylo

In one of my previous posts I was talking about FO.NET which I was using to generate a pdf documents from XSL-FO. FO.NET is one of the .NET ports of Apache FOP. Unfortunatelly it is no longer maintained. I known it when I decidec to use it, because there is a lack of available (free) choices for .NET to render a pdf form XSL-FO. I hoped in this implementation I will find all I need to create a pdf file with my really simple requirements. FO.NET is a port from some old version of Apache FOP and I found really quickly that there is a lack of some features that I needed, like dotted borders, double borders or support for margins. So I started to looking for some alternatives. I didn’t try the NFOP, another port of Apache FOP, because I found something I think much more better, the IKVM.NET project. IKVM.NET it is not a pdf renderer. So what it is? From the project site: IKVM.NET is an implementation of Java for Mono and the Microsoft .NET Framework. It includes the following components: a Java Virtual Machine implemented in .NET a .NET implementation of the Java class libraries tools that enable Java and .NET interoperability In the simplest form IKVM.NET allows to use a Java code library in the C# code and vice versa. I tried to use an Apache FOP, the best I think open source pdf –> XSL-FO renderer written in Java from my project written in C# using an IKVM.NET and it work like a charm. In the rest of the post I want to show, how to prepare a .NET *.dll class library from Apache FOP *.jar’s with IKVM.NET and generate a simple Hello world pdf document. To start playing with IKVM.NET and Apache FOP we need to download their packages: IKVM.NET Apache FOP and then unpack them. From the FOP directory copy all the *.jar’s files from lib and build catalogs to some location, e.g. d:\fop. Second step is to build the *.dll library from these files. On the console execute the following comand: ikvmc –target:library –out:d:\fop\fop.dll –recurse:d:\fop The ikvmc is located in the bin subdirectory where you unpacked the IKVM.NET. You must execute this command from this catalog, add this path to the global variable PATH or specify the full path to the bin subdirectory. In no error occurred during this process, the fop.dll library should be created. Right now we can create a simple project to test if we can create a pdf file. So let’s create a simple console project application and add reference to the fop.dll and the IKVM dll’s: IKVM.OpenJDK.Core and IKVM.OpenJDK.XML.API. Full code to generate a pdf file from XSL-FO template: static void Main(string[] args) { //initialize the Apache FOP FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance(); //in this stream we will get the generated pdf file OutputStream o = new DotNetOutputMemoryStream(); try { Fop fop = fopFactory.newFop("application/pdf", o); TransformerFactory factory = TransformerFactory.newInstance(); Transformer transformer = factory.newTransformer(); //read the template from disc Source src = new StreamSource(new File("HelloWorld.fo")); Result res = new SAXResult(fop.getDefaultHandler()); transformer.transform(src, res); } finally { o.close(); } using (System.IO.FileStream fs = System.IO.File.Create("HelloWorld.pdf")) { //write from the .NET MemoryStream stream to disc the generated pdf file var data = ((DotNetOutputMemoryStream)o).Stream.GetBuffer(); fs.Write(data, 0, data.Length); } Process.Start("HelloWorld.pdf"); System.Console.ReadLine(); } Apache FOP be default using a Java’s Xalan to work with XML files. I didn’t find a way to replace this piece of code with equivalent from .NET standard library. If any error or warning will occure during generating the pdf file, on the console will ge shown, that’s why I inserted the last line in the sample above. The DotNetOutputMemoryStream this is my wrapper for the Java OutputStream. I have created it to have the possibility to exchange data between the .NET <-> Java objects. It’s implementation: class DotNetOutputMemoryStream : OutputStream { private System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream(); public System.IO.MemoryStream Stream { get { return ms; } } public override void write(int i) { ms.WriteByte((byte)i); } public override void write(byte[] b, int off, int len) { ms.Write(b, off, len); } public override void write(byte[] b) { ms.Write(b, 0, b.Length); } public override void close() { ms.Close(); } public override void flush() { ms.Flush(); } } The last thing we need, this is the HelloWorld.fo template. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <fo:layout-master-set> <fo:simple-page-master master-name="simple" page-height="29.7cm" page-width="21cm" margin-top="1.8cm" margin-bottom="0.8cm" margin-left="1.6cm" margin-right="1.2cm"> <fo:region-body margin-top="3cm"/> <fo:region-before extent="3cm"/> <fo:region-after extent="1.5cm"/> </fo:simple-page-master> </fo:layout-master-set> <fo:page-sequence master-reference="simple"> <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body"> <fo:block font-size="18pt" color="black" text-align="center"> Hello, World! </fo:block> </fo:flow> </fo:page-sequence> </fo:root> I’m not going to explain how how this template is created, because this will be covered in the near future posts. Generated pdf file should look that:

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Free Document/Content Management System Using SharePoint 2010

- by KunaalKapoor

That’s right, it’s true. You can use the free version of SharePoint 2010 to meet your document and content management needs and even run your public facing website or an internal knowledge bank. SharePoint Foundation 2010 is free. It may not have all the features that you get in the enterprise license but it still has enough to cater to your needs to build a document management system and replace age old file shares or folders. I’ve built a dozen content management sites for internal and public use exploiting SharePoint. There are hundreds of web content management systems out there (see CMS Matrix). On one hand we have commercial platforms like SharePoint, SiteCore, and Ektron etc. which are the most frequently used and on the other hand there are free options like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Plone etc. which are pretty common popular as well. But I would be very surprised if anyone was able to find a single CMS platform that is all things to all people. Infact not a lot of people consider SharePoint’s free version under the free CMS side but its high time organizations benefit from this. Through this blog post I wanted to present SharePoint Foundation as an option for running a FREE CMS platform. Even if you knew that there is a free version of SharePoint, what most people don’t realize is that SharePoint Foundation is a great option for running web sites of all kinds – not just team sites. It is a great option for many reasons, but in reality it is supported by Microsoft, and above all it is FREE (yay!), and it is extremely easy to get started. From a functionality perspective – it’s hard to beat SharePoint. Even the free version, SharePoint Foundation, offers simple data connectivity (through BCS), cross browser support, accessibility, support for Office Web Apps, blogs, wikis, templates, document support, health analyzer, support for presence, and MUCH more.I often get asked: “Can I use SharePoint 2010 as a document management system?” The answer really depends on · What are your specific requirements? · What systems you currently have in place for managing documents. · And of course how much money you have J Benefits? Not many large organizations have benefited from SharePoint yet. For some it has been an IT project to see what they can achieve with it, for others it has been used as a collaborative platform or in many cases an extended intranet. SharePoint 2010 has changed the game slightly as the improvements that Microsoft have made have been noted by organizations, and we are seeing a lot of companies starting to build specific business applications using SharePoint as the basis, and nearly every business process will require documents at some stage. If you require a document management system and have SharePoint in place then it can be a relatively straight forward decision to use SharePoint, as long as you have reviewed the considerations just discussed. The collaborative nature of SharePoint 2010 is also a massive advantage, as specific departmental or project sites can be created quickly and easily that allow workers to interact in a variety of different ways using one source of information. This also benefits an organization with regards to how they manage the knowledge that they have, as if all of their information is in one source then it is naturally easier to search and manage. Is SharePoint right for your organization? As just discussed, this can only be determined after defining your requirements and also planning a longer term strategy for how you will manage your documents and information. A key factor to look at is how the users would interact with the system and how much value would it get for your organization. The amount of data and documents that organizations are creating is increasing rapidly each year. Therefore the ability to archive this information, whilst keeping the ability to know what you have and where it is, is vital to any organizations management of their information life cycle. SharePoint is best used for the initial life of business documents where they need to be referenced and accessed after time. It is often beneficial to archive these to overcome for storage and performance issues. FREE CMS – SharePoint, Really? In order to show some of the completely of what comes with this free version of SharePoint 2010, I thought it would make sense to use Wikipedia (since every one trusts it as a credible source). Wikipedia shows that a web content management system typically has the following components: Document Management: - CMS software may provide a means of managing the life cycle of a document from initial creation time, through revisions, publication, archive, and document destruction. SharePoint is king when it comes to document management. Version history, exclusive check-out, security, publication, workflow, and so much more. Content Virtualization: - CMS software may provide a means of allowing each user to work within a virtual copy of the entire Web site, document set, and/or code base. This enables changes to multiple interdependent resources to be viewed and/or executed in-context prior to submission. Through the use of versioning, each content manager can preview, publish, and roll-back content of pages, wiki entries, blog posts, documents, or any other type of content stored in SharePoint. The idea of each user having an entire copy of the website virtualized is a bit odd to me – not sure why anyone would need that for anything but the simplest of websites. Automated Templates: - Create standard output templates that can be automatically applied to new and existing content, allowing the appearance of all content to be changed from one central place. Through the use of Master Pages and Themes, SharePoint provides the ability to change the entire look and feel of site. Of course, the older brother version of SharePoint – SharePoint Server 2010 – also introduces the concept of Page Layouts which allows page template level customization and even switching the layout of an individual page using different page templates. I think many organizations really think they want this but rarely end up using this bit of functionality. Easy Edits: - Once content is separated from the visual presentation of a site, it usually becomes much easier and quicker to edit and manipulate. Most WCMS software includes WYSIWYG editing tools allowing non-technical individuals to create and edit content. This is probably easier described with a screen cap of a vanilla SharePoint Foundation page in edit mode. Notice the page editing toolbar, the multiple layout options… It’s actually easier to use than Microsoft Word. Workflow management: - Workflow is the process of creating cycles of sequential and parallel tasks that must be accomplished in the CMS. For example, a content creator can submit a story, but it is not published until the copy editor cleans it up and the editor-in-chief approves it. Workflow, it’s in there. In fact, the same workflow engine is running under SharePoint Foundation that is running under the other versions of SharePoint. The primary difference is that with SharePoint Foundation – you need to configure the workflows yourself. Web Standards: - Active WCMS software usually receives regular updates that include new feature sets and keep the system up to current web standards. SharePoint is in the fourth major iteration under Microsoft with the 2010 release. In addition to the innovation that Microsoft continuously adds, you have the entire global ecosystem available. Scalable Expansion: - Available in most modern WCMSs is the ability to expand a single implementation (one installation on one server) across multiple domains. SharePoint Foundation can run multiple sites using multiple URLs on a single server install. Even more powerful, SharePoint Foundation is scalable and can be part of a multi-server farm to ensure that it will handle any amount of traffic that can be thrown at it. Delegation & Security: - Some CMS software allows for various user groups to have limited privileges over specific content on the website, spreading out the responsibility of content management. SharePoint Foundation provides very granular security capabilities. Read @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee537811.aspx Content Syndication: - CMS software often assists in content distribution by generating RSS and Atom data feeds to other systems. They may also e-mail users when updates are available as part of the workflow process. SharePoint Foundation nails it. With RSS syndication and email alerts available out of the box, content syndication is already in the platform. Multilingual Support: - Ability to display content in multiple languages. SharePoint Foundation 2010 supports more than 40 languages. Read More Read more @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd776256(v=office.12).aspxYou can download the free version from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5970

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Configuring Oracle HTTP Server 12c for WebLogic Server Domain

- by Emin Askerov

Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) 12c 12.1.2 which was released in July 2013 as a part of Oracle Web Tier 12c is the web server component of Oracle Fusion Middleware. In essence this is Apache HTTP Server 2.2.22 (with critical bug fixes from higher versions) which includes modules developed specifically by Oracle. It provides a listener functionality for Oracle WebLogic Server and the framework for hosting static pages, dynamic pages, and applications over the Web. OHS can be easily managed by Weblogic Management Framework, a set of tools which provides administrative capabilities (start, stop, lifecycle operations, etc.) for Oracle Fusion Middleware products. In other words all tools which are familiar to us (Node Manager, WLST, Administration Console, Fusion Middleware Control etc.) presented as a part of Weblogic Management Framework and using for managing Java and System Components both for Weblogic Server and Standalone Domain types. You can familiarize yourself with these terms using related documentation: 1. Introduction to Oracle HTTP Server: http://docs.oracle.com/middleware/1212/webtier/index.html 2. Weblogic Management Framework: http://docs.oracle.com/middleware/1212/core/ASCON/terminology.htm#ASCON11260 In the given post I would like to cover rather simple use case how to configure OHS as web proxy in Weblogic Cluster environment. For example, we have existing Weblogic Domain where some managed servers have been joined to cluster and host business applications. We need to configure web proxy component which will act as entry point, load balancer for our cluster for user requests. Of course, we could install old good Apache HTTP Server and configure mod_wl plugin. However this solution not optimal from manageability perspective: we need to install Apache, install additional plugin then configure it by editing configuration file which is not really convenient for FMW Administrators and often increase time of performing of simple administrative task. Alternatively, we could use OHS as System Component within Weblogic Domain and use full power of Weblogic Management Framework in order to configure, manage and monitor it! I like this idea! What about you? I hope after reading this post you will agree with me. First of all it is necessary to download OHS binaries. You can use this link for downloading: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/webtier/downloads/index2-303202.html As we will use Fusion Middleware Control for managing OHS instances it is necessary to extend your domain with Enterprise Manager and Oracle ADF and JRF templates. This is not topic for focusing in this post, but you could get more information from documentation or one of my previous posts: http://docs.oracle.com/middleware/1212/wls/WLDTR/fmw_templates.htm#sthref64 https://blogs.oracle.com/imc/entry/the_specifics_of_adf_12c Note: you should have properly configured Node Manager utility for managing OHS instances Let’s consider configuration process step by step: 1. Shut down all Weblogic instances of existing domain including Admin Server; 2. Install Oracle HTTP Server. You should use your Fusion Middleware Home Path (e.g. /u01/Oracle/FMW12) for Installation Location and select Colocated HTTP Server option as Installation Type. I will not focus on this topic in this post. All information related to OHS installation you could find here: http://docs.oracle.com/middleware/1212/webtier/WTINS/install_gui.htm#i1082009 3. Next we need to extend our existing domain with OHS component. In order to do this you should do the following: a. Run Fusion Middleware Configuration Wizard (ORACLE_HOME/oracle_common/common/bin/config.sh); b. On the step 1 select Update an existing domain option and point your Fusion Middleware Home Path; c. On the step 2 check Oracle HTTP Server, Oracle Enterprise Manager Plugin for WEBTIER templates; d. Go through other steps without any changes and finish configuration process. 4. Start Admin Server and all managed servers related to your cluster 5. Log in to Enterprise Manager FMW Control using http://<hostname>:<port>/em URL 6. Now we will create OHS instance within our Weblogic Domain Infrastructure. Navigate to Weblogic Domain -> Administration -> Create/Delete OHS menu item; 7. Enter to edit mode, clicking Changes -> Lock&Edit menu item; 8. Create new OHS instance clicking Create button; 9. Define Instance Name (e.g. DevOSH) and Machine parameters; 10. Now we need to define listen port. By default OHS will use 7777 port number for income HTTP requests. We could change it to any free port number we would like to use. In order to do it, right click on our created OHS instance (left hand panel) and navigate to Administration -> Port Configuration; 11. Click on record with port number 7777 and then click Edit button; 12. Change port number value (in our case this will be 8080) and then click OK button; 13. Now we need to edit mod_wl_ohs configuration in order to enable OHS to act as proxy for WebLogic Server Instances/Cluster; 14. In order to do it right click on our created OHS instance (left panel) and navigate to Administration -> mod_wl_ohs Configuration; a. In Weblogic Cluster you should enter cluster address (define <host:port> for all managed servers which participated in cluster), e.g: 192.168.56.2:7004,192.168.56.2:7005 b. Define Weblogic Port parameter at which the Oracle WebLogic Server host is listening for connection requests from the module (or from other servers); c. Check Dynamic Server List option. This will dynamically update cluster list for every request; d. In the Location table define list of endpoint locations which you would like to process. In order to do this click Add Row button and define Location, Weblogic Cluster, Path Trim and Path Prefix parameters (if required); e. Click Apply button in order to save changes. 15. Activate changes clicking Changes ? Activate Changes menu item; 16. Finally we will start configured OHS instance. Right click on OHS instance tree item under Web Tier folder, select Control -> Start Up menu item; 17. Ensure that OHS instance up and running and then test your environment. 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